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NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 



NAPOLEON'S 

BRITISH VISITORS AND CAPTIVES 

1801-1815 

BY JOHN GOLDWORTH ALGER 

f 

AUTHOR OF THE 'NEW PARIS SKETCH BOOK' 

'ENGLISHMEN IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION' 

'GLIMPSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION' 

AND 'PARIS IN 1789-94' 



JAMES POTT AND COMPANY 
1904 



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Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTORY, 



CHAPTER I 



PAGE 

1 



CHAPTER II 

THE VISITORS 

No Thoroughfare — Occasional Visitors — Negotiations — 
Fox— M.P.'s— Ex- and Prospective M.P.'s— Peers and 
their Families — Baronets — Soldiers — Sailors — Func- 
tionaries — Lawyers — Doctors — Clergymen — Savants — 
Artists — Actors — Inventors — Claimants and Men of 
Business — Writers on France — Other Authors — Kesidents 
— Ancestors — Fugitives — Emigres, 



12 



CHAPTER III 

AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 

Parisian Attractions — Napoleon — Foreign Notabilities — 
Mutual Impressions — Marriages and Deaths— Return 
Visits, ....... 126 



CHAPTER IV 

CAPTIVITY 

The Rupture — Detentions — Flights and Narrow Escapes — 
Life at Verdun — Extortion — Napoleon's Rigour — M.P.'s 
— The Argus — Escapes and Recaptures — Diplomatists 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

— Liberations — Indulgences — Women and Children — 
Captures in War— Kumbold — Foreign Visitors — British 
Travellers — Deaths — The Last Stage — French Leave — 
Unpaid Debts, ...... 174 



CHAPTEE V 

TWO RESTORATIONS 

The Eestoration— Aristocrats and Commoners — Unwelcome 
Guests — Wellington in Danger — Misgivings — Napoleonic 
Emblems — Spectacles — Visits to Elba — Egerton's Siege 
—St. Helena Eyewitnesses and Survivors, . . 271 



APPENDIX 

A. MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT, . . . -316 

B. PEERS AND THEIR FAMILIES, .... 317 

C. LORD J. RUSSELL AT ELBA {narrative noio first published), 319 

INDEX OF NAMES, AND LIST OF OTHER VISITORS, . 325 



mTRODUCTORY 

The Frencli Revolution, of wliich — philosophers re- 
garding it as still unfinished — this book is really a 
chapter, produced a greater dislocation of individuals 
and classes than had been known in modern times. 
It scattered thousands of Frenchmen over Europe, 
some in fact as far as America and India, while, on 
the other hand, it attracted men of all nationalities to 
France. It was mainly a centrifugal, but it was partly 
a centripetal force, especially during the Empire ; never 
before or since was France so much as then the 
focus of political and social life. Men of all ranks 
shared in both these movements. If princes and 
nobles were driven from France there were some who 
were attracted thither even in the early stages of the 
Revolution, while Napoleon later on drew around him 
a galaxy of foreign satellites. 

To begin with the centrifugal action, history fur- 
nishes no parallel to such an overturn of thrones and 
flight of monarchs. With the exception of England, 
protected by the sea, Scandinavia and Russia by 
distance, and Turkey by Oriental lethargy, every 
dynasty of Europe was shaken or shattered by the 

A 



2 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

volcano. The Bourbons became wanderers on the 
face of the earth. Louis xvi.'s two brothers went 
hither and thither before finding a secure resting- 
place on British soil. The elder, 'Monsieur,' Comte 
de Provence (afterwards Louis xviii.), fled from Paris 
simultaneously with his crowned brother, but, more 
fortunate than poor Louis, safely reached Belgium. 
The younger, Comte d'Artois (afterwards Charles x.), 
had preceded him by nine months. Both re-entered 
France in 1792 with the German and Royalist in- 
vaders, but had soon to retreat with them. Monsieur 
betook himself first to Ham in Westphalia, and next 
to Verona, but the Doge of Venice, fearful of displeas- 
ing revolutionary France, 'invited' him to withdraw. 
Russian hospitality likewise proved ephemeral, but in 
England, first at Gosfield, then at Wanstead, and lastly 
at Hartwell, he was able quietly to await the downfall 
of the Corsican usurper. D'Artois found halting-places 
at Venice, Mantua, Brussels, and St. Petersburg, and 
for a few days he was a second time on French soil 
in the island of Yeu; but the failure of the expedi- 
tion to western France soon obliged him to recross 
the Channel, where Holyrood and eventually London 
afforded him a refuge. Of the jealousies of these two 
exiled princes, and of the mortifications and dissen- 
sions of their retinues, it is needless to speak. The 
Duke of Orleans (the future Louis Philippe), deserting 
the Republican army along with Dumouriez, after 
teaching in a school in Switzerland, and after a visit 
to America, where he spent a night in an Indian wig- 
wam, also repaired to England. There he was doomed 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

to long years of inactivity, though he would fain have 
joined the English forces in Spain, in which case, as 
having fought against France, he could scarcely have 
grasped the French crown. The Due de Bourbon like- 
wise settled in England, and it would have been well 
had his unfortunate son, the Due d'Enghien, followed 
his example. The king's two aunts, one of them the 
reputed mother of the Comte de Narbonne, himself 
escorting them and destined to ten years of exile, 
found their way to Rome^ but driven thence by the 
French, after many buffetings they ended their wander- 
ings and their lives at Trieste. 

These banished French princes had the doubtful 
consolation of seeing other regal or princely personages 
equally storm-tost. The Statthalter of Holland had 
to pass many years of banishment in England, and 
even stooped to soliciting a pecuniary indemnity from 
Napoleon. The Austrian and Prussian monarchs, 
though not actually driven out of their dominions, 
saw their capitals occupied by French armies, and had 
to bow to the stern dictates of the Conqueror. The 
rulers of German principalities were swept away by the 
hurricane. The Spanish royal family were consigned to 
the custody of Talleyrand at Valen9ay. The Portuguese 
princes took refuge in Brazil. Italian monarchs fared 
no better. The sovereigns of Piedmont had to retire 
to the island of Sardinia, the only possession remaining 
to them. The King of Naples was likewise driven from 
his continental dominions, British protection ensuring 
him a footing in Sicily. Italian dukes were rudely 
supplanted by Napoleon's relatives or other puppets. 



4 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Ferdinand iii. of Tuscany was driven to Vienna, 
though subsequently assigned a duchy in Germany. 
Even the Papacy, which had long been unscathed by 
war or revolution, was overwhelmed by the current. 
Forced away from Rome, one Pope died in the French 
fortress of Valence, while another became a prisoner at 
Savona, 

In France not merely the princes, but almost the 
entire nobility, were fugitives. England, Germany, 
Switzerland, and Russia were inundated with aristo- 
crats, who at first, counting on a speedy and triumphant 
return, formed little colonies, in one of which Fanny 
Burney found a husband ; but the exhaustion of their 
resources soon scattered them hither and thither. 
Some were descendants of Jacobite refugees, who found 
shelter in the very country whence their ancestors had 
fled. Adversity, in this as in other cases, brought out 
the best qualities of some and the worst of others. 
Frivolity and gravity, self - denial and selfishness, 
heroism and poltroonery, intrigue and probity, honour 
and unscrupulousness, existed side by side. Some 
formed royalist corps subsidised by foreign govern- 
ments, or actually joined foreign armies, persuading 
themselves that they were thus fighting not against 
France but against a usurpation. The few who went 
to America, whether from choice, like the epicure 
Brillat Savarin, or from compulsion like Talleyrand, 
were spared this sad necessity of accepting foreign 
alms or serving foreign states. The Comte d'Estaing 
took office under an Indian rajah. Reduced to penury, 
those who remained in the Old World resorted to every 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

conceivable expedient. The women were naturally the 
greatest sufferers. Delicate fingers which had never 
done a stroke of work had to busy themselves in dress- 
ing dolls, in embroidery, in flower or portrait painting, 
in nursing the sick, and even in milking cows and 
making butter for sale. Men brought up in luxury 
deemed themselves fortunate if they could earn a 
livelihood as journalists, translators, or teachers. More 
frequently they had to become book-keepers or tailors, 
to keep wine shops, to sing at music-halls, to act as 
prompters at theatres, and even to be water-carriers. 
Some, alas ! with the connivance at least for a time 
of their princes, forged assignats. Welcomed in some 
quarters, mobbed or even expelled as vagabonds in 
others, they had to exchange palaces for cottages, 
sumptuous diet for the roughest fare, jewels and finery 
for rags. No wonder that humiliation and anguish 
drove some to suicide, and the lives of many others 
must have been shortened by privations. Yet many^ 
with the traditional light-heartedness of Frenchmen, 

' Laughed the sense of misery away.' 

Besides the noblesse, which included the episcopate, 
there were thousands of priests and hundreds of nuns, 
who, fleeing from relentless persecution, found succour 
from Protestant governments and Protestant philan- 
thropy. There were also ex-deputies and publicists, 
whom the dungeon, and probably the guillotine, would 
otherwise have claimed. Lally ToUendial, the younger 
Mirabeau, Mounier, and Montlosier, had sat in the 
National or Constituent Assembly. Mallet du Pan, 



6 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Etienne Dumont, Antraigues, driven to suicide, Lafay- 
ette, consigned to an Austrian fortress, and Dumouriez, 
offering military counsels to the English, may also be 
mentioned. It need hardly be said that wealthy 
foreigners like Quintin Craufurd, who had become 
numerous in Paris before the Revolution, were frightened 
away, leaving their property to be confiscated, for the 
Jacobins did not even recognise their right to quit 
France, which had become not merely inhospitable but 
dangerous. Not until the Consulate and the Empire 
did France again attract wealthy foreigners, or recover 
a portion of its then much impoverished nobility. 

As for the immigration, though far less important 
in numbers and quahty, it was not inconsiderable. Men 
of all nationalities hurried to Paris between 1789 and 
1792 to see or serve the Revolution. There were 
English men and women like Paine (or shall we reckon 
him an American ?), George Grieve, General Money, 
Thomas Christie, John Oswald, Helen Williams, and 
Mary Wollstonecraft. There were Americans like 
Barlow, Eustace, Paul Jones, and Joshua Barney; 
Germans like Cloots, Trenck, and George Forster; 
Belgians and Dutchmen like de Kock, father of the 
novelist, and Proly, a natural son of the Austrian 
statesman Kaunitz; Poles like Wittinghoff; Russians 
like Strogonoff; Italians like Rotondo, Cerutti, and 
Buonarotti; Spaniards like Olavide and Miranda. 
Most of these men embraced the cause of the Revolu- 
tion as a religion, and were quite ready to fight in its 
behalf, in defence as they imagined of liberty and en- 
lightenment, even against their native countries. Some 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

of them paid the penalty of their enthusiasm by the 
dungeon or the guillotine. It is true that when 
Napoleon seized the reins such illusions could scarcely 
have remained, but even then there were numerous 
foreigners eager to serve him for the sake of lucre or 
adventure, not to speak of Irish refugees and Poles, 
whom he lured by the expectation of achieving their 
independence. Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, little 
foreseeing his marriage with our Princess Charlotte or 
his elevation to the crown of Belgium, was anxious to 
become one of his aides-de-camp. Some men fought 
by turns for and against him. The Revolution indeed, 
though it ended by making Europe nationalist, made it 
for a time cosmopolitan. Napoleon did much, more- 
over, to eradicate patriotism, especially in the military 
class. Hence Bernadotte was not the only soldier who 
changed sides from personal pique or according to the 
prospects of victory, and he did not even imagine that 
by his appearance as an invader he would disqualify 
himself for supplanting Napoleon on the French throne. 
Jomini, a Swiss, after serving Napoleon in high rank, 
offered his sword to Russia, though Napoleon was com- 
pelled to acquit him of having treacherously revealed 
his military secrets. And Talleyrand, while accepting 
Napoleon's pay, intrigued with his foes, doubtless salv- 
ing his conscience, if indeed he had a conscience, with 
the notion that he was thus promoting the interests of 
France. Few men were so scrupulous as the Due de 
Richelieu, a future French statesman, in stipulating 
that Russia should not send him to fight against his 
countrymen. As to the rank and file, they had of 



8 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

course no choice. Belgians, Dutchmen, Germans, Poles, 
Italians, had to join or combat French armies accord- 
ing to the political exigencies of the moment or the 
periphery of French rule. Napoleon's armies were 
thus a medley of nationalities, and the only wonder 
is that defections so rarely occurred. 

Such was the France, such the Europe, to which this 
book relates. It is a chapter in the history both of 
England and of Napoleon. We first see Englishmen 
pouring over to Paris during the interlude or truce of 
Amiens, to make or renew acquaintance with it after 
ten years of hostilities, or to recover confiscated pro- 
perty. Peers, M.P.'s, soldiers and sailors, philosophers, 
scholars, merchants, were all eager to see the young 
Corsican who had already accomplished so much and 
was evidently marked out to accomplish much more. 
We next see hundreds of these non-combatants de- 
tained for eleven years on the paltry pretext of their 
being liable to militia service at home, and in defiance 
of all international courtesies. We see some of them 
not merely shifted from place to place, now permitted 
to reside in Paris, now relegated to provincial towns, 
but actually incarcerated in fortresses. We find the 
British Government standing on principle, and declin- 
ing to exchange the thousands of French captives for 
these unfortunates, though there were not wanting men 
who urged on it the expediency of stooping to deal with 
Napoleon as with a mountain brigand or a barbarous 
chief, especially as he was arbitrarily imprisoning with- 
out trial Frenchmen whom he suspected or feared. We 
meet with cases of crying heartlessness among these 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

detentions, relieved only by a very rare gleam of 
humanity or magnanimity. We then see the sudden 
collapse of this gigantic tyranny and the liberation, 
as from an immense aviary suddenly thrown open, of 
grey-headed and despondent captives. This flight of 
caged birds is quickly followed by, we might almost 
say is coincident with, an influx of fresh visitors, mostly 
so unmindful of the past as to take for granted the 
stability of the restored monarchy. We see a few 
tourists repairing to Elba to get a glimpse of the de- 
throned Emperor, one or two of them sagacious enough 
to forebode that reappearance on French soil which was 
to scare away nearly all their countrymen. The cur- 
tain falls on the Hundred Days, but it is just raised to 
show us Napoleon pathetically trying with little success 
at St. Helena to master the language of his jailers. 

The centenary of the Peace of Amiens seemed a suit- 
able occasion for writing, not a political history of that 
truce, for on this there is nothing new to be said, but 
an account of its social aspects, of the visits paid to 
Paris by Englishmen, which had never before been so 
numerous, of the impression made on each other by 
guests and hosts, and of the experiences of those who 
on the resumption of hostilities found themselves de- 
tained as prisoners. French writers have shown how 
Napoleon treated his own subjects; it completes the 
picture of him to see how he treated Englishmen, who 
never, except his guardians at St. Helena when jailer 
had become prisoner, came into such close relations with 
him. I may fairly claim to have broken new ground. 
It is true that I gave two brief chapters on this subject 



10 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

in 1889 in my Englishmen in the French Revolution, 
but I have since met in the French National Archives 
and elsewhere with a mass of additional materials which 
enable me to go into much greater detail. The start- 
ing-point of my researches was the discovery, for which 
and for other communications I am indebted to M. 
L6once Grasilier, of a register of the principal foreign 
arrivals.! j have also been favoured with informa- 
tion from three correspondents in reply to questions 
respecting their ancestors, and the Dictionary of 
National Biography has of course much assisted me, 
though in some instances the dates of birth given or 
left in doubt by it may be supplied or corrected by the 
register above mentioned, while visits to Paris have 
sometimes escaped the notice of its contributors. I 
have likewise consulted at the Record Office the 
despatches of Anthony Merry, the predecessor of Lord 
Whitworth at the Paris Embassy, though these, like 
the Whitworth series edited by Mr. Oscar Browning, 
seldom stoop from political to social incidents. But 
the most vivid picture of the life and treatment of the 
captives is gained from the police bulletin daily pre- 
pared for Napoleon and now preserved in the French 
Archives.^ They also throw a flood of light on the 
character of Napoleon's internal rule, yet, so far as I 
know, no French historian has as yet utilised them, 
and I have every reason to believe that I am the first 
English writer who has consulted them. They have 

^ National Arcliives, F. 7, 2231. See English Historical lievietv, 
October 1899. 

^ A. F. iv. 1490-1563. References not otherwise indicated relate to 
the French Archives. 



INTRODUCTORY 11 

furnished me with, most of the data respecting the 
captives. 

As for printed sources, the reports of the Historical 
Manuscripts Commission have thus far brought to Hght 
but few letters written by visitors to their friends, yet 
many of these may still be in existence. The literature 
of the Verdun and other captives is disappointing. 
Sturt, Forbes, Pinkerton, Lawrence, and Blayney 
necessarily give individual experiences rather than 
a general history of the detentions. Not one of 
these writers, moreover, ventured on keeping a jour- 
nal, which would have been obviously unsafe, and 
some of them, publishing their recollections while 
comrades were still in captivity, naturally omitted 
details which might have lessened the pity felt in 
England by revealing the failings of a small minority, 
or which might have goaded the jailers to increased 
rigour. The police bulletins, on the other hand, written 
for perusal by one man, a man whom it was dangerous 
to attempt to hoodwink, had no reason for reticence. 



II 

THE VISITOES 

No Thoroughfare — Occasional Visitors — Negotiations — Fox — 
M. P. 's — Ex- and Prospective M. P. 's — Peers and their Families — 
Baronets — Soldiers — Sailors — Functionaries — Lawyers — Doctors 
— Clergymen — Savants — Artists — Actors — Inventors— Claimants 
and Men of Business — Writers on France— Other Authors— Resi- 
dents — Ancestors — Fugitives — Emigrds. 

The Peace of Amiens reopened France, and not merely 
France but central and southern Europe, to British 
travellers. Since the outbreak of hostilities in 1793 
the 'grand tour' had been suspended. Maritime 
ascendency, indeed, had always ensured our com- 
munications with North Germany and Italy, but the 
risk of capture by privateers such as befell Richard 
(afterwards the Marquis) Wellesley, the Duke of Wel- 
lington's elder brother, on his return from Lisbon in 
1794, coupled with intermittent campaigns and con- 
quests by France, had virtually put a stop to foreign 
travel. Young noblemen in charge of tutors or ' bear- 
wards ' had ceased to traverse the Continent, and 
French schools had ceased to receive British students. 
The schools, moreover, had mostly been closed by the 
Revolution. An Arthur Wellesley, even if inclined, 
could not have studied horsemanship at Angers, nor 
could a Gilbert Elliot have been the comrade of a 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 13 

Mirabeau at Fontainebleau. So also as to girls. Pente- 
mont Abbey in Paris, where daughters of such aristo- 
cratic families as Annesley, Hobart, De Ros and De 
Bathe had been educated between 1780 and 1789, 
was shut, preparatory to conversion into a barrack,^ 
while the English Austin convent, where for 150 
years Towneleys, Dormers, and Fermors had been 
pupils, sometimes when adults returning as nuns, 
though still in the possession of the community, had 
not yet been reopened as a school. London news- 
papers complacently calculated the money thus pre- 
vented from leaving the country. 

It it true that a few of the Englishmen arrested as 
hostages for Toulon in the autumn of 1793, though 
released after the Terror, had been unable or un- 
willing to quit France. Christopher Potter, ex-M.P. 
for Colchester, in 1796 offered Lord Malmesbury, on 
behalf of Barras, to secure peace for a bribe of half 
a million. Captain Henry Swinburne, commissioner 
for exchanging prisoners, a collateral ancestor of the 
poet, likewise found in Paris about that date Mrs. Grace 
Dalrymple Elliott, ex-mistress of 'Egalite' Orleans, 
who remained till 1801, Admiral Rodney's Portuguese 
wife and her two daughters, Richard Chenevix, grand- 
nephew of a Bishop of Waterford, Walter Smythe, 
brother of the famous Mrs. Fitzherbert, two sons of the 
Whitehall preacher Charles Este, and George Hamilton, 
a Jamaica planter whose wife, a daughter of Lord Leven, 
was afterwards, as we shall see, the companion of Sir 
Herbert Croft; but of course there had been scarcely 

^ Jefferson also placed his daughter there. 



14 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

any fresh arrivals. Indeed it was illegal for British 
subjects, unless with special permission, to cross over 
to France.^ They were liable at home to punishment 
for the attempt, just as they were liable if they reached 
the French shore to being prevented from landing or to 
incarceration as spies. Lord Camelford, Pitt's eccen- 
tric cousin, who threatened if Home Tooke was refused 
admission as a clergyman to the seat for Old Sarum,^ 
to nominate in his place his negro servant — a black 
man in lieu of a black coat — was arrested in February 
1799 when on the point of crossing the Channel; but 
as his object was to examine the Mediterranean ports 
he was liberated, being, however, deprived of his naval 
post. We shall hear of him again. Boyd and Ker, 
bankers of whom too we shall hear again, made their 
way back to Paris in 1797 in the hope of recovering 
confiscated property, but were promptly packed off. A 
London newspaper of that year mentions that two men 
who had paid a Prussian captain eighty guineas for a 
passage from Dover to Calais were also unceremoni- 
ously expelled. Braham, however, and Miss Storace 
got to Paris and gave concerts in 1797. Thomas 
Hardy, the radical shoemaker, managed to send 
Thomas Paine a pair of shoes so good that Paine 
lent them as a model to a Parisian craftsman, but 
Hardy would not have found it easy to carry them over 
himself Fishermen and smugglers, it is true, kept up 
intermittent communications, conveying newspapers or 

1 This was granted in 1800 to John Cleaver Banks in order to 
examine manuscripts in the National Library. 

* Camelford, in 1802, sold the borough for £42,000 to Dupr^. 
Porcher. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 15 

merchandise, but they seldom ran the risk of taking 
passengers. Even fishing-boats, moreover, which on 
both sides had been unmolested, were in January 1801 
declared by the British Government liable to capture ; 
but Bonaparte's threat of recalling Otto, the commis- 
sioner of exchanges, from a country where the laws and 
usages of war were disregarded and violated,^ coin- 
cidentally with the resignation of Pitt on account of 
George iii.'s objection to Catholic emancipation, led to 
this order being rescinded. Indeed the explanations 
given on this point by the new Addington Administra- 
tion paved the way for peace negotiations. 

There had been, it is true, isolated opportunities for 
Englishmen of forming or communicating impressions 
of France. Malmesbury^ had not only been at Paris 
in 1796, but at Lille in 1797, on both occasions receiv- 
ing an offer from Barras through a Bostonian named 
Melville — probably the son of Major Thomas Melville, 
one of the Boston tea-party, the last American to wear 
a cocked hat — to conclude peace for £450,000.^ Mal- 
mesbury * and his staff on their return assuredly found 

1 Times, March 3, 1801. 

^ In January 1793, quitting his wife, he followed to Paris Aim^ de 
Coigny, Duchess de Fleury, of whom he had become the paramour at 
Rome, and who had gone to London for her accouchement. Being 
arrested, he applied to her previous lover Lauzun to procure his 
release, but was liberated without any necessity of mediation and 
returned to London. 

^ Pitt was inclined in 1797 to entertain the overture, but the French 
coup d'Mat put an end to negotiations. See Fortescue Papers, iii. 
pp. 356-357. The French authorities ordered Melville's arrest, but he 
apparently fled in time, and coolly revisited Paris in 1802. 

* The Jacobins were scandalised at the pomp with which he entered 
Paris, where the market-women waited on him to make and receive 
presents. 



16 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

much avidity for information on the France trans- 
formed by the Revolution. That stajff consisted at 
Paris of George Ellis, of the Anti-Jacohin, Lord Gran- 
ville Leveson-Gower, of whom we shall hear again, 
and James Talbot, afterwards Secretary of Legation 
in Switzerland.^ To avoid being mobbed they were 
obliged to wear the republican cockade whenever they 
appeared in the street. At Lille Malmesbury was 
accompanied not only by Ellis and Talbot, but by 
Henry Wellesley, afterwards Earl Cowley, and by 
Lord Morpeth, afterwards Earl of Carlisle. Not 
merely Swinburne but Captain James Cotes and 
General Knox were also sent to Paris between 1796 
and 1799 to effect an exchange of prisoners. They 
must have been eagerly questioned on their return. 
The notorious Governor Wall, who, living in the south 
of France, had been refused service in the French 
army ,2 went back to England in 1797, but clandes- 
tinely, and it would have been better for him had he 
remained on the Continent. He had to conceal his 
identity and his experiences.^ But Sir Sidney Smith 
had escaped from the Temple in 1798 after two years' 
incarceration, and Napoleon in the following year 



1 Talbot, when acting at Berne in Wickham's absence in 1797, 
advanced money to French conspirators for a scheme of massacring 
the members of the Directory at the Luxembourg, and he applied to 
his Government for further funds for that purpose ; but Grenville 
and Canning refused to countenance the scheme and directed him to 
get back the money (Martel, Historiens Fantaisistes). Though thus 
rebuked Talbot was not dismissed. 

2 J. F. Neville, Leisure Moments. 

3 Detected in 1802 he was hanged for the murder of Sergeant Arm- 
strong at Goree in 1782. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 17 

released some English prisoners, sending them home 
with professions of a desire for peace. Sir Robert 
Barcla}^ a diplomatist captured at sea, was also, after 
half an hour's conversation, liberated b}'- him. Lord 
Carysfort, whose mutinous crew had taken him to 
Brest, was likewise permitted, in November 1800, after 
nine months' detention, to visit his family on parole. 
Masquerier managed, moreover, in that year to visit 
Paris and to sketch Napoleon's portrait for exhibition 
in London. Tallien, on the other hand, captured by 
the English on his way back from Egypt, had been 
allowed in March 1800 to return to France, where he 
could give a glowing account of the attentions paid him 
by the Opposition leaders, and of his presence, the ob- 
served of all observers, at parliamentary debates. On 
re-entering Paris he found that his handsome wife, 
Therese Cabarrus, had become the mistress of the 
army contractor Ouvrard, and she never rejoined him. 

But, broadly speaking, Englishmen and Frenchmen 
had for nearly a decade been perfect strangers, so that 
a British cartoon entitled 'The First Kiss this Ten 
Years' depicted Monsieur Frangois stooping to kiss 
Britannia with the words, ' Madam, permit me to pay 
my profound esteem to your engaging person and to 
seal on your divine lips my everlasting attachment.' 
To which Britannia replies, ' Monsieur, you are truly a 
well-bred gentleman, and though you make me blush, 
yet you kiss so delicately that I could not refuse you, 
though I was sure that you would deceive me again.' 

The peace preliminaries were signed on the 1st 
October 1801. England, without waiting for the 



18 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

ratifications, released her 14,000 French prisoners,^ 
and on the 23rd October Boulogne, for the first time 
for nearly nine years, saw the arrival of an English 
vessel bringing 160 of these captives. 

It is not my purpose to enter into the details of the 
negotiations, nor need I dwell on the rejoicings for the 
peace. Cobbett in London had his windows smashed 
for refusing to illuminate, and the jury recommended 
to mercy three of the delinquents, but Cobbett, though 
invited by the judge to join in this recommendation, 
declined, stating that he expected justice. The London 
mob took the horses out of Otto's carriage and drew 
it, while Lauriston, grand-nephew of the famous 
speculator Law,^ on coming over with the ratifica- 
tions received ovations. On the 1st November Lord 
Cornwallis, ex-Governor of India, accompanied by his 
son, Lord Brome (afterwards the second and last 
marquis), by his illegitimate son. Colonel (eventually 
General Sir Miles) Nightingale,^ his son-in-law, Cap- 
tain Singleton, Colonel Littlehales (afterwards Sir E. 
Littlehales Baker), and Francis (brother of Sir John) 
Moore, started for Paris,^ 

^ This was a saving of expense, for Napoleon had refused to pay the 
£2,000,000 demanded for their maintenance. 

2 It is pleasant to think that Lauriston, Macdonald, and Clarke, 
three men of British extraction, were among the few French generals 
who on Napoleon's return from Elba remained faithful to the 
Bourbons. 

3 M.P. for Eye in 1820. 

^ The suit of carriages for the use of Marquis Cornwallis in France 
consists of a town coach, the body yellow, with ajms, supporters, 
crests, and the Order of the Garter, surrounded with mantles, all 
highly emblazoned. The lining morocco with rich silk lace, and 
reclining cushions of silk and morocco. The carriage crane-neck ; 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 19 

Amiens had been chosen for the negotiations, but 
Napoleon, evidently wishing Lord Cornwallis to see 
how firmly the Consulate was established, had invited 
him to come round by Paris on the plea of showing 
him the illuminations of the 9 th November in celebra- 
tion of the peace with Austria. The road from Calais 
to Paris, which had since 1793 been almost deserted, 
was hastily put in repair for him, and was soon to be 
dotted with mail-coaches and post-chaises. Cornwallis 
arrived on the 7th November; he alighted at the Hotel 
Grange Bateliere, the finest in Paris, it being an old 
mansion with spacious grounds, and he was received 
by Napoleon on the 10th. Napoleon suggested to 
him a reciprocal expulsion of foreign conspirators, the 
Bourbon princes to be packed off by England, and the 
United Irishmen by France ; but Cornwallis naturally 
evaded so delicate a question. Napoleon did not invite 
him to dinner, and did not rise to receive Lord Brome 
in his box at the Opera, an incivility much commented 
upon. Cornwallis gave a dinner on the 16th to Lord 
Minto, who was on his way home from the Vienna 
Embassy, and five other fellow-countrymen. 

' After dinner,' says the Times, ' the company went to the 
Opera, where the performance was the Mysteries of Isis. 
Every part of the house was so crowded that numbers were 

the hammer-cloth a bear-skin ornamented with silver paws. A town 
chariot painted to correspond, with arms, supporters, crests, and the 
Garter, but no mantles ; crane-neck. A travelling coach, painted the 
same ; crane-neck with imperials, etc. Harness has been made for 
twelve horses ornamented with silver in coronets, crests, and the 
Garter, with reins, tassels, and toppings, decorated with' silk button- 
hangers. — Times. 



20 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

unable to procure places. Some couplets were sung in 
celebration of the union of the two nations, which excited 
an enthusiasm that displayed itself by universal and repeated 
bursts of applause. 

' Lord Cornwallis was so extremely affected by the scene, 
that he shed tears ! On his rising to go away, the audience 
recommenced their testimonies of applause. His Lordship 
showed how much he was flattered by the reception he had 
met with, by bowing to them in the most affecting manner. 
The following may be given as a specimen of the verses 
sung upon this occasion : — 

" Anglais, Frangais, restez unis, 
Qu'a vos chants I'Univera r^ponde : 
Quand de tels rivaux sont amis, 
Qui peut troubler la paix du monde ? " ' 

Cornwallis also dined, with Talleyrand, and Francis 
James Jackson, writing to Speaker Abbot (afterwards 
Lord Colchester), says : — 

' What do you think of Lord Cornwallis, with all his 
dignity of decorum, dining the other day at a table of thirty 
covers with the kept mistresses, and being obliged to hand 
out the ugliest and frailest of them, because she was in 
keeping of the minister for Foreign Affairs 1 ' 

On the 28th Cornwallis left for Amiens. There 
Joseph Bonaparte conducted the negotiations, and he 
speaks highly of Cornwallis's straightforwardness. 
Cornwallis carried back with him to England cotton- 
velvet goods, to show his countrymen the superiority 
of Amiens looms, and the Calais municipality gave him 
a banquet before he embarked.^ 

^ The termination of the Congress at Amiens was an object of the 
deepest regret to the Prefects and officers, civil as well as military. 



NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 21 

Anthony Merry, who had been Consul in Spain, had 
been sent to Paris in July 1801, succeeding Cotes as 
Commissioner of Exchanges, but he assisted Cornwallis 
at Amiens, and during his absence from Paris Francis 
James Jackson, who had been Secretary of Legation 
first at Madrid, then at Berlin, and afterwards at St. 
Petersburg, and had been secretary to Pitt, acted as 
charge, d'affaires. Jackson was accompanied by his 
brother George, to whom Parisian sights were a 
novelty, and by Dawson Warren ^ and Hill as attaches. 
Jackson, in reporting his arrival in November, stated 
that he had been loaded with attentions such as ' the 
most refined system of civility could suggest.' On the 
4th January 1802 he presented his credentials to 
Napoleon, who said, ' I am very glad to see an English 
minister here ; it is essential to the civilisation of the 
world.' ^ Merry returning from Amiens, Jackson left 
on the 18th April 1802,^ and Merry remained at the 
head of the embassy till December 1802, He was 

The establishment of each ambassador had its particular merit. That 
of Marquis Cornwallis was distinguished for the magnificence of his 
liveries, and the splendour of his table and equipage. On all his 
grand dinners, his Lordship had twelve servants in rich liveries, 
besides six Valets-de-Ghambre also in a kind of scarlet iiniform. 

But in regard to the luxuries of the table, and the choice of his 
wines, citizen Schimmelpenninck, the Batavian plenipotentiary, out- 
did all other competition. He had his turbot and eels from Holland, 
pike and perch from the Rhine ; and the heaths and woods of Pro- 
vence supplied him with game. No wonder that the absence of such 
a man should be lamented by the Mayor and Common Council of that 
city.— Times, April 2, 1802. 

^ The Warrens and the Jacksons were kinsmen, for in 1796 a Rev. 
Dawson Warren had married Caroline Jackson. 

^ Despatches, Record Office. 

^ In 1809 he was appointed minister at Washington. 



22 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

reproaclied with giving no dinner on George iii.'s 
birthday on the 4th of June, but he was expecting to 
be superseded by Lord Whitworth, and his stipend 
probably did not allow of much display. The embassy 
was installed, as before the Revolution, in the Caraman 
mansion, faubourg du Roule. 

Whitworth, formerly at St. Petersburg, had been 
appointed ambassador as early as April 1802, but on 
account of the delay in the nomination of the French 
Envoy to London his instructions were not drawn up 
till the 10th September, and he did not start till the 
10th November. He went by Southampton and Havre, 
and was accompanied by his newly- married wife, the 
Duchess of Dorset, widow of the Ambassador to Paris 
of 1789, and by her two daughters. Her son, the 
young Duke of Dorset, remained at Harrow, where he 
was the schoolfellow and friend of Byron, but as we 
shall see he went over to Paris for the Easter holidays.^ 
Whitworth's staff consisted of his brother. Colonel 
Whitworth, James Talbot, James Henry Mandeville,^ 
Captain Edward Pierrepont,^ and Benj afield, with the 
Rev. Thomas Hodgson as chaplain, and Dr. Maclaurin 
as physician. The Duchess of Dorset's retention of 
her first husband's title greatly puzzled the Parisians, 
many of whom actually believed that she was not 
married to Whitworth. According to Maria Edgeworth, 
the latter had at Paris the same house, the same wife, 
and the same horses as the Duke of Dorset had had 

1 He died from a hunting accident in 1815. 

^ Afterwards minister to the Argentine Republic. 

^ Son of Lord Pierrepont (created Earl Manvers in 1806). 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 23 

in 1789, but the line should doubtless be drawn at the 
horses. He took with him six carriages, one of which 
had been the admiration of Londoners, though it was 
less imposing than that taken over by a Dr. Brodum, 
whose object was to promote the sale of his syrup for 
ensuring longevity. He presented his credentials on 
the 6th December 1802, and remained as we shall see 
till the 12th May 1803.i 

The Dover and Calais mail packets did not recom- 
mence running till the 18th November 1801, but 
English visitors had begun to arrive as early as Sep- 
tember or October, and Savary tells us that these 
pioneers facilitated the conclusion of peace, for they 
returned with assurances of the stability of the con- 
sular government. Napoleon on the 14th October 
instructed Fouche freely to admit English visitors, 
taking care, however, that they had Foreign Office 
passports, and were not French emigres. One of them 
unfortunately lost his life. Charles John Clarke, of 
Hitchin Priory, had gone over with his wife. Their 
only child had died two years before, and they sought 
rehef for their sorrow, intending to go on to Italy. 
Clarke was on a stand witnessing the fireworks of the 
9 th November in the Tuileries gardens when it gave 
way, and its eighty occupants were injured, Clarke so 
seriously, his spine being fractured, that after lingering 
nearly a month he expired. Napoleon sent his surgeon 

^ The embassy apparently required a Frenchman to translate or 
correct its letters to Talleyrand, for in 1804 Francois Soul^s, who had 
lived twelve years in England and had translated English works, 
applied for the Legion of Honour on the ground that he had not only 
helped to capture the Bastille, but had been employed by Whitworth. 



24 NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 

to make inquiries and offer his services, stating that 
he should himself call as soon as the patient was well 
enough to receive visitors. Clarke, who had been six 
years married, was only thirty-one years of age. His 
widow, several years his junior, carried his remains 
home. 

Never before had there been such an influx of 
English visitors as during these eighteen months. ' All 
the idle captives of the land of fogs,' says M. Sorel, ' shook 
their damp wings and prepared to take their flight 
towards the regions of pleasure and brightness.' Even 
the influenza or grippe, which prevailed in January and 
February 1803, did not deter them, and they mostly 
escaped the malady, an escape attributed to their being 
habituated to humidity. ' Ours,' says Samuel Rogers, 
who was one of the visitors, 'is a nation of travellers, 
and no wonder, when the elements, air, water, and 
fire attend at our bidding to transport us from shore 
to shore, when the ship rushes into the deep, her track 
the foam as of some mighty torrent, and in three hours 
or less we stand gazing and gazed at among a foreign 
people. None want an excuse. If rich, they go to 
enjoy; if poor, to retrench; if sick, to recover; if 
studious, to learn; if learned, to relax from their 
studies.'^ This, though written in 1839, is, with the 
exception of the reference to steam, applicable to the 
influx of 1801-1803. A few went for health, taking 
Paris as a stage to Montpellier, then still in repute, 
Nice, or Italy, others to recover property or for busi- 
ness, a few for study, most for pleasure. The current 

^ Rogers, Italy. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 25 

steadily swelled all the winter, spring, and summer. 
One of the earliest packets brought sixty-three ladies, 
and the Calais hotels were packed, seven hundred and 
ninety-eight passengers landing in ten days. In the 
last decade of Prairial (June 1802) there were ninety- 
one arrivals, in the last decade of Thermidor (August) 
ninety-seven, in the last decade of Fructidor (Septem- 
ber) one hundred and fifty-six.^ This last average of 
fifteen a day seems small to us, but was surprising for 
that time. Merry states that there were once as many 
as five thousand English in Paris, and that when he 
left in December there were one thousand nine hundred. 
In the autumn he sent home long lists of persons to 
whom he had given return passports, and he had com- 
plained in May that he was so busy in issuing them 
as to have no time to attend properly to diplomatic 
business. 

The cost of a trip to Paris was what in those days 
seemed moderate. For £4, 13s. you could get a through 
ticket by Dover and Calais, starting either from the 
City at 4.30 A.M. by the old and now revived line of 
coaches connected with the rue Notre Dame des 
Victoires establishment in Paris, or morning and night 
by a new line from Charing Cross.^ Probably a still 
cheaper route, though there were no through tickets, 
was by Brighton and Dieppe, the crossing taking 10 or 
15 hours. By Calais it seldom took more than 8 hours, 
but passengers were advised to carry light refreshments 

1 A. F. 1539-1543. 

2 The return coaeh left Paris at 6 a.m., but from July 1802 there 
was also a berline with six places which started at 4 p.m., travelled 
all night, and arrived as soon as the morning coach. 



26 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

with them. The diligence from Calais to Paris, going- 
only four miles an hour, took 54 hours for the journey, 
but a handsome carriage drawn by three horses, in a 
style somewhat similar to the English post-chaise, could 
be hired by four or five fellow-travellers, and this made 
six miles an hour. £30 would cover the expense of a 
seven weeks' visit, including hotels, sight-seeing, and 
restaurants.^ As for fashionable people, even if they 
went by coach to Dover, they posted from Calais to 
Paris, especially if they formed a family party and 
took servants with them. Some, like Lord Guilford, 
even shipped their own carriages, but he had to hire 
four sorry steeds at Calais, for horses were not allowed 
to land.2 

Lord Elgin had four servants, Lord Yarmouth, with 
his wife and two children, had eight, Thomas Hope 
three, and Lady Maynard two. The journey occupied 
four days, if we may judge by the French General 
Hardy, who, captured in Ireland in 1798, had been 
exchanged — there being no English prisoner of equal 
rank — for four officers, four non-commissioned officers, 
and ten privates. It took him a day to get from 
London to Dover, another day for the crossing, and 
two days for the journey from Calais to Paris. 

Passengers by Boulogne if arriving at low tide were 
landed in a singular fashion. Thomas Manning, of 
whom we shall hear presently, in a letter to his father 
communicated to me by his grand-nephew, Mr. E. B. 
Harris, says : — 

^ Practical Guide . . . London to Paris. R. Phillips, 1802. 
2 Mrs. F. E. King, Tour in France. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 27 

' The tide having ebbed, we were obliged to land without 
entering the inner harbour of Boulogne, It was night 
before the sluggish boat that the Boulogne mariners sent off 
could land us all, and a strange landing it seemed to me. 
The boat rowed towards the nearest shore till it ran 
aground, which happened in the midst of the breakers. In 
an instant the boathead was surrounded by a throng of 
women up to their middles and over, who were there to 
carry us on shore. Not being aware of this manoeuvre, we 
did not throw ourselves into the arms of these sea-nymphs 
so instantly as we ought, whereby those who sat at the stern 
of the boat were deluged with sea spray. For myself I was 
in front, and very quickly understood the clamour of the 
mermaids. I flung myself upon the backs of two of them 
without reserve, and was safely and dryly borne on shore, 
but one poor gentleman slipped through their fingers and 
fell over head and ears into the sea.' 

This primitive mode of landing had been noted in 
1792 by William Hunter, who states that one of the 
' mermaids,' unequal to the weight of a stout English- 
man who had been reserved to the last, dropped him 
midway. Lanterns dimly lit up this curious scene.^ 

The return voyage had to be made on French 
bottoms, in order that the mercantile marine might be 
encouraged, and this regulation had its inconvenience, 
not to say dangers. The Times of 12th January, 1803, 
says : — 

' A navy Officer, who recently returned from Calais, where 

^ In 1814, according to Kirwan, the fishwives no longer carried 
passengers on their backs, but wading through the water tugged or 
pushed small boats ashore. But Richard Bernard Boyle was carried 
ashore by three men, one holding each leg and the third pushing 
behind. 



28 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

he had spent a few days, was actually under the necessity 
of giving directions, and afterwards exerting himself with 
alacrity, to preserve his own life and that of the other 
passengers. The master of the vessel, who was very much 
afraid of the violence of the wind, sat half-way down to the 
cabin, with his head under the companion, and covered with 
a huge night-cap, to prevent its reaching him, as he was (he 
said) grievously afflicted with the rheumatism; and to the 
repeated demands of the passengers, why he did not come 
upon deck and give orders for the safety of the vessel, he 
answered, deliberately, taking the pipe out of his mouth, 
that there was no immediate danger, and if any should 
arise, he had a good sea-boat, which would carry him and 
all his crew safe to land.' 

Let us now see who were the visitors, beginning not 
with the earliest but by far the most eminent of them, 
Fox. He had. not seen France since 1788, when he 
passed through with Mrs. Armistead on his way to 
Switzerland and Italy. Waiting, like many other 
M.P.'s, till his election was over, he started at Dover on 
the 31st July 1802, again accompanied by the so-called 
Mrs, Armistead (only now for the first time publicly 
figuring as his wife, though they had been privately 
married some years previously), by St. Andrew (after- 
wards Lord) St. John, M.P., and by John Bernard 
Trotter, his secretary.^ His nephew Lord Holland had 
engaged rooms for him in the faubourg St. Germain, 
but he seems to have removed to the hotel Grange 
Bateliere and eventually to the hotel Richelieu, the 
mansion erected and formerly occupied by the 

^ Also his biographer. Trotter died in poverty in 181S, aged forty- 
three. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 29 

notorious roue. Marshal (grand-nephew of Cardinal) 
Richelieu, who had entertained him in 1788. Fox's 
chief object was to consult French records for his life 
of James ii., his ancestor, and he daily frequented the 
National Archives for that purpose, in company with 
St. John, Robert (afterwards Sir Robert) Adair, and 
Trotter. Talleyrand, after his return to England, sent 
him a complete copy of Barillon's despatches, which 
Fox had declared to be worth their weight in gold. 

Many people in England fancied, however, that he 
was mainly bent on seeing Napoleon, and the carica- 
turists did not neglect so tempting a subject. Gillray, 
in a cartoon entitled ' Introduction of Citizen Volpone 
and his suite at Paris,' represented Bonaparte as seated 
on a chair surrounded by Mamelukes, while Fox and 
his wife,^ both extremely corpulent, are bowing and 
curtseying, Erskine, in legal costume with his hand on 
his heart, and Lord and Lady Holland making up the 
group. Another caricaturist depicted the reception by 
the First Consul of Fox, Erskine, and Combe. To Fox 
he says, ' Fox, ha ! How old are you ? ' To Combe, ' A 
brewer, Lord Mayor, ha ! great pomp,' and to Erskine, 
' Mr. Brief, ha ! a great lawyer ; can talk well. There, 
you may go.' ^ Trotter tells us what really occurred : — 

' Bonaparte, of a small and by no means commanding 
figure, dressed plainly though richly in the embroidered 

^ Her age is given in the police register as sixty-three, but as she 
died in 1842 at the age of ninety-two, she was really only fifty-two. 
Fox's age, on the other hand, is given as fifty, whereas it was fifty- 
three. The ages in the register seem sometimes to be hotel-keepers' 
random guesses. 

" Ashton, English Caricature on Napoleon. 



30 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

consular coat, without powder in his hair, looked like a 
private gentleman, indifferent as to dress, and devoid of all 
haughtiness in his air. The English ambassador, after the 
presentation of some English noblemen, announced to him 
Mr. Fox. He was a good deal flurried, and after indicating 
considerable emotion said — "Ah, Mr. Fox; I have heard with 
pleasure of your arrival, I have desired much to see you. 
I have long admired in you the orator and friend of his 
country, who, in constantly raising his voice for peace, con- 
sulted that country's best interests, those of Europe, and of 
the human race. The two great nations of Europe require 
peace. They have nothing to fear [from each other]. They 
ought to understand and value [esteem] one another. In 
you, Mr. Fox, I see with much satisfaction that great states- 
man who recommended peace because there was no just 
object of war, who saw Europe desolated to no purpose 
and who struggled for its relief" ' 

Trotter adds that Fox, averse to compliments*; 
neither replied to nor reciprocated them, and that a 
few questions and answers respecting his tour termi- 
nated the interview. 

Napoleon afterwards invited Fox to a dinner of two 
hundred guests, to which he went unpowdered. John 
King, of whom we shall presently hear, thought it 
inconsistent of Fox to accept such attentions, which 
acceptance he attributes to a desire to please his wife ; 
but Fox obviously could not decline an invitation from 
the ruler of the land whose hospitality he was enjoying, 
though he felt perfectly free to refuse to lunch with the 
brewer Santerre, notorious for his part in the execution 
of Louis XVI. According to the Rev. Stephen Weston, 
Napoleon complimented Fox as the greatest man of a 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 31 

great nation. Fox, as was to be expected, combated 
Napoleon's accusations against Pitt, and especially 
against Windham, of complicity in the infernal- 
machine plot of 1800. Thiers gives an account of 
Fox being taken by Napoleon to the Industrial Exhibi- 
tion at the Louvre, when a courtier sarcastically pointed 
on a globe to the small space occupied by England, 
whereupon Fox, spreading his arms round the globe, 
said, ' Yes, but though we all spring from there we 
grasp the whole world.' The truth is that though 
Napoleon and Fox happened to be simultaneously at 
the Exhibition they did not come across each other.^ 
It was Chaptal who conducted Fox over the Exhibition, 
and he tells us that Fox admired the specimens, but 
thought them too dear for common use, upon which 
Chaptal took him to the cutlery department, where 
F( X filled his pockets with cheap knives, and then to 
a watch stall, where he bought half a dozen watches at 
13 f. a piece.2 He frequented the theatres. Not only, 
however, was his French very imperfect, but he com- 
mitted a great breach of decorum by not calling on the 
two minor consuls, Cambaceres and Lebrun, He had 
to apologise through Merry. Lebrun overlooked the 
blunder and received Fox on his reparatory visit, but 
Cambaceres was ruffled, and insisted that Fox should 
make an unceremonious call as though he had been 
before. 

We learn this from a secret agent of the Bourbons,^ 

1 Adair, Mission to the Court of Vienna, p. 505. 

2 Chaptal, Industrie Frangaise, 1817. 
^ Remade, Bonaparte et les Bourbons. 



32 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

who also tells us that Fox, after his conversation with 
Napoleon, said, 'It's all up with liberty.' He could 
scarcely, however, have needed that conversation to 
form this judgment, for Napoleon on the 2nd August 
had been elected consul for life. Fox must have felt 
much more at home with Lafayette, with whom he 
spent a fortnight at La Grange, planting ivy round the 
newly-erected towers as a memento. He dined in 
Paris with Talleyrand and Junot, and went shooting 
with General Berthier. Madame Junot thought he 
looked with his dark grey coat like a Devonshire 
farmer, but when talking his countenance was radiant 
with intelligence, sagacity, and eloquence.^ On the 
16th September he attended a sitting of the Tribunat, 
when the captain on guard, Boyer, thanked him for 
having in 1795 obtained the unfettering, and all but 
the liberation, of two hundred French officers at Por- 
chester, a benefit which they would never forget. ' Our 
chains were broken,' said Boyer : ' we were almost free.'^ 
At Versailles, on entering a room which he was told 
had long been shut up, he found his own bust, along 
with those of Algernon Sidney, Hampden, Chatham, 
and Washington.^ But was this a stratagem of 
Napoleon to flatter him ? Curiously enough. Napoleon 
on his dressing - table at the Tuileries had, as the 
Edgeworths noticed, the bust not only of Fox but of 
Nelson, for whom he also entertained great admiration. 
He asked Mrs. Damer for a second bust of Fox, 

^ Duchesse d'Abrantes, M6moires. 

2 European Magazine, 1802. 

^ Lascases speaks by mistake of a statue. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 33 

a commission which the lady could not execute till 
1815. 

Fox was criticised in England for taking tea with 
Helen Maria Williams, for it had been erroneously 
imagined, by Boswell among others, that she had 
marched exultantly over the bodies of the Swiss 
massacred in 1792. He was also twitted with meeting 
Arthur O'Connor, the United Irish exile. The fact was 
that he and Erskine went to dine with Madame Tallien 
without knowing that O'Connor would be there. Fox 
with great tact made the best of what he considered an 
unlucky incident by treating O'Connor exactly like the 
other guests, but Erskine was more embarrassed, for 
as counsel on his trial at Maidstone in 1798 he had 
vouched for O'Connor's loyalty, whereas the latter had 
since made a confession of conspiracy. 

Fox remained till the 11th November. 'I have 
certainly,' he wrote, 'seldom spent a time pleasanter 
than at Paris, but I never in my life felt such delight 
in returning home.' In 1806 he reciprocated the 
civihties shown him by sending word to Talleyrand 
that a Frenchman called Guillet had called on him 
and offered to kidnap Napoleon. Guillet was con- 
sequently arrested in Paris, and consigned, not to 
prison, but to Bicetre lunatic asylum, where he died 
twelve months afterwards. Canning was guilty of the 
bad taste, not to say ignominy, of censuring Fox in 
Parliament for giving this warning, the generosity of 
which was warmly appreciated by Napoleon, as he told 
Lord Ebrington at Elba in 1814. 

The general election had come rather inopportunely 

c 



34 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

for visits to Paris, Parliament being dissolved on the 
29tli June, and the new House meeting on the 16th 
November. Elections, moreover, were much less ex- 
peditiously despatched than nowadays. Nevertheless 
about eighty M.P.'s, mostly Foxites, as Liberals were 
then called, but some Pittites or Ministerialists, went 
over either before or after the elections. Some of 
these M.P.'s are entitled to notice.^ 

Acheson, who in 1807 became Lord Gosford, revisited 
Paris in 1814, and became Governor of Canada. Adair, 
as we have seen, was the friend of Fox, and indeed was 
destined to be his last surviving friend. When visit- 
ing St. Petersburg in 1791 his letters home were in 
cipher, but forwarded through Whitworth, the ambas- 
sador, and he was absurdly suspected of having been 
sent thither by Fox to thwart Pitt's policy.^ Barclay, 
as already mentioned, was a diplomatist, and had 
been a prisoner in France. He had just married a 
German lady at Hamburg. Baring was the famous 
banker, and though deaf from his youth sat and voted 
in Parliament. Benfield and Boyd not only come 
together alphabetically, but had been partners in a 
London bank which was wound up in 1799. Paul 
Benfield went out to India in the Company's service, 
and there made a fortune, partly by trade, partly by 
fortification contracts and by loans. He advanced 
money to the Nawab of the Carnatic, on conditions for 
which Burke afterwards, with his customary vehe- 
mence, branded him as 'a criminal who ought long 

^ For full list see Appendix A. 
2 Dropmore Papers y ii. 11. 



NAPOLEON'S BEITISH VISITOKS 35 

since to have fattened the kites with his offal.' In 
1777 he was ordered to quit India, but he was subse- 
quently reinstated in his post, and returned to Madras. 
In 1780 he became M.P. for Cricklade, and in 1796 he 
exchanged that seat for Shaftesbury, another of his 
five pocket-boroughs. He was also recorder for Shaftes- 
bury, such appointments being sometimes conferred on 
or sold by corporations to men not even lawyers. In 
1796 he assigned the second seat to Walter Boyd, 
whose sleeping partner he had become in 1793. Boyd 
had had a bank in Paris, and had been an agent for 
the French Kevolutionary Government in paying for 
corn from England; but threatened with arrest in 
October 1792 he had fled, with his partner Walter Ker. 
It was alleged in December 1794 that he had sold to 
the French Treasury drafts for ten million francs on 
London, boasting that they would be dishonoured ; but 
the Finance Committee, on investigation, declared the 
charge unfounded. In 1795 Boyd contracted for an 
English loan, but in 1797 his bank fell into difficulties. 
Boyd had entered into imprudent speculations, and 
when he went to Paris, calculating on the restitution 
of his property, the change of government there frus- 
trated his hopes, and he was expelled. In 1799 Pitt, 
apparently in order to extricate him from his em- 
barrassments, concluded a second loan with him with- 
out inviting tenders from any other firm, on the plea 
that this had been promised him in 1793. A select 
committee of inquiry severely condemned this transac- 
tion, but an obsequious House of Commons condoned 
it. It did not, however, avert Boyd's bankruptcy. 



36 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

The two partners were now among tlie earliest visitors 
to Paris. They went at the close of 1801, Boyd still 
hoping to recover property. They were on the point 
of losing their seats for Shaftesbury, Benfield having 
sold that borough for £40,000 to a Colonel Wood. We 
shall see by and by how they sped in France. 

Best, who became successively Serjeant Best, Sir 
Thomas Best, and Lord Wynford, reached the judicial 
bench in 1818, and in 1824 was made Chief-Justice 
of the Common Pleas. Originally a Whig, he ended 
as a violent Tory, Brodrick was Secretary to the 
(India) Board of Control. Burdett speaks for himself, 
as when, on being greeted at Calais as the friend of 
Fox, he exclaimed, ' No, the friend of liberty.' In the 
summer of 1793 he had attended the clubs and the 
Convention. Father of Lady Burdett-Coutts, he began 
as a demagogue and ended as a reactionary. He 
boasted of his election for Middlesex having cost 
him £100,000. He, with his friend Bosville, called on 
Thomas Paine, giving him £240 to clear off his debts 
and return to America. He also called, with his old 
tutor Lechevalier, on La Reveillere Lepaux, the theo- 
philanthropist, on whom he made no favourable im- 
pression.^ Burdett, who had witnessed the early stage 
of the Revolution with more curiosity than sympathy, 
told Arthur Young, who had likewise seen something 
of that upheaval, that the Consulate was the com- 
pletest military despotism that had ever existed.^ 

Lord George Cavendish became in 1831 Earl of 

1 La Reveillere Lepaux, Memoires. 
■2 A. Young, Journal, 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 37 

Burlington, and succeeded his brother as Duke of 
Devonshire. Alderman Combe had been Sheriff of 
London in 1792 and Lord Mayor in 1799. Fox and 
Sheridan were godfathers to the son born to him during 
his mayoralty. Napoleon, according to Weston, said 
to him, 'You were Lord Mayor in a year of dearth. 
I know what it is to have to keep people quiet when 
bread is dear.' Unsuccessful at a by-election for the 
City in 1795, he had been elected in 1796. In 1800 he 
had convened a common hall to petition for peace. In 
1805 he gave a dinner in his brewery to the Duke and 
Duchess of York, the Duko of Cambridge, Lady Anne 
Fitzroy, and other aristocratic guests. He ultimately 
resigned his aldermanic gown and seat in Parliament 
and confined himself to his business. He died in 
1818. 

Cowper was the son of Earl Cowper. Dallas, on re- 
turning home from the service of the East India Com- 
pany, was the champion of Warren Hastings, and in 
1793 and 1799 had written pamphlets against the 
French Government. The Marquis of Douglas, son of 
the Duke of Hamilton, was sent in 1807 as Ambassador 
to St. Petersburg. Ellis was afterwards Lord Seaford, 
taking his title from the little Sussex town for which 
he and his brother sat. Erskine, of whom we have 
already heard, became Lord Chancellor in the thirteen 
months' Administration of ' All the Talents.' His son 
David, who accompanied him, succeeded him in the 
peerage. 

Fitzpatrick, the intimate friend of Fox and the uncle 
of Lord Holland, was, like Fox, fond both of the classics 



38 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

and of gambling. He was an amateur actor and a wit. 
He had made an impressive speech in 1796 in favour of 
Lafayette, then a prisoner in Austria, and now visited 
him at La Grange. In 1806 he became Secretary for 
War. John Leslie Foster became an Irish Judge and 
lived till 1842. Philip Francis, the Indian councillor 
commonly regarded as the author of the Letters of 
Junius, escorted three of his children, Philip, Eliza- 
beth, and Harriet, who went on to Nice for the benefit 
of Harriet's health. We have no letters from Francis 
himself, but young Philip tells us that Bonaparte 
renewed (?) acquaintance with his father and was very 
civil. He likewise tells us that at Madame Bona- 
parte's reception he saw Bonaparte, after watching 
her play for some time from behind her chair, drop a 
purse into her lap as he moved away. Francis, with 
his daughter Catherine, was again in Paris in January 
1803, apparently from alarm at the miscarriage of 
letters from Nice, and while there heard of Harriet's 
death. The Miss Berrys had been very kind to her. 
Francis had twice visited Paris in 1791, and his son 
had learned French at Rouen in the summer of 1792.^ 
Lord Granville Leveson-Gower became the first Earl 
Granville and Ambassador to France. His son we all 
remember as Foreign Secretary. Graham, the Ripon 
Graham, was the father of Sir James Graham the 
statesman. Hare, who sat from 1781 to 1804 for the 
Duke of Devonshire's borough of Knaresborough, was a 
wit and a classical scholar who broke down, in his 
maiden speech and thenceforth remained silent. He 

1 The Francis Letters, 1901. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 39 

went to Paris for his health or fell ill when there, and 
Fox called on the invahd, who died shortly after his 
return. Jekyll, too, who had visited France in 1775, 
was a famous wit and a great diner-out. He also 
sat for a pocket-borough from 1787 to 1816, but his 
wit did not come out in his frequent speeches. The 
Prince Regent, fond of good talkers, made him in 
1805 his Solicitor- General, and procured for him a 
commissionership in lunacy and a mastership in 
Chancery. 

Johnston had been British Resident at Lucknow, and 
was an authority on India. Kinnaird, who in 1803 suc- 
ceeded to the peerage, being intimately connected with 
the Bonapartists, had information in 1817 of Cantillon's 
intended attack on the Duke of Wellington, and sent 
him an anonymous warning. He and his wife after- 
wards went to Paris to give information on the subject, 
and the latter was arrested as an accomplice. Kinnaird 
naturally complained of this as a violation of a virtual 
safe-conduct. He had been expelled from France in 
the previous year as a political intriguer. He eventu- 
ally lived in Italy on an allowance from his creditors. ^ 
Long, afterwards Lord Farnborough, had been Secre- 
tary to the Treasury, became a Commissioner of the 
Treasury in 1804, and in 1806 was made Secretary for 
Ireland. He had written pamphlets on the French 
Revolution in 1795. Eventually he was known as an 
art connoisseur, and George iv. sought his advice on 
architecture. His father-in-law. Sir Abraham Hume, 
accompanied him. 

1 Pasquier, Mimoires, vol. iv. 



40 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Lord Lovaine in 1830 succeeded his father as Earl of 
Beverley, and eventually in 1865, two years before his 
death, became Duke of Northumberland. He was the 
father of the Duke who adopted Irvingism and married 
Henry Drummond's daughter. He went on to Naples 
with his newly married wife, Louisa Wortley, and his 
father, and on their return they found themselves, as 
we shall see, prisoners. Macpherson had in 1785 
been Governor-General of India. Sir C. Morgan be- 
came Judge- Advocate. Lord Morpeth became Earl of 
Carlisle and father of the distinguished statesman. 
NichoU, a frequent speaker and a strenuous opponent 
of the war with France, had visited that country in 
1788-1789 and had made the acquaintance of the Abbe 
Raynal and other economists. Paget, afterwards Sir 
Edward Paget, son of the Earl of Uxbridge, was 
destined, as we shall find, to pay a second and in- 
voluntary visit. He had already served in Flanders, 
Minorca, and Egypt. He had been one of the hostages 
given to the French at Cairo till they embarked in 
July 1801. He afterwards served in Sicily and the 
Peninsula and was Governor of Ceylon. Parnell was 
the great-uncle of the Home Rule leader. He became 
Secretary for War, Paymaster- General, and Treasurer 
of the Navy, and in 1841 was created Lord Congleton. 
Lord Henry Petty, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the 
age of twenty-five, and Pitt's successor in the repre- 
sentation of Cambridge University (where he defeated 
Lord Palmerston), became on his brother's death in 1809 
Marquis of Lansdowne. After filling various high offices 
he survived till 1863 to the age of eighty, the Nestor of 



NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 41 

the House of Lords. Pollen, the accomplished son of 
a Surrey clergyman, had by one vote defeated the 
Duke of Norfolk's nominee at Leominster. He after- 
wards raised a corps of Fencibles, whom he accompanied 
to Nova Scotia. On his way home in 1808, after several 
years' travel in Russia and other countries, he was 
wrecked, and drowned off Memel at the age of thirty- 
two. His wife applied for permission to return home 
through France, but the favourable answer being de- 
layed, she embarked at Konigsberg for England.^ St. 
John, as we have seen, was the companion of Fox, 
and afterwards succeeded to a peerage. Scott was 
the elder son of Lord Chancellor Eldon, but pre- 
deceased his father, leaving a son to succeed to the 
title. 

John Spencer Smith, page in his youth to Queen 
Charlotte, was a diplomatist. He was asked by 
Napoleon whether he was not Sidney Smith's brother, 
and Napoleon, on being answered in the affirmative, 
rejoined, 'He is a good fellow and a good officer.' 
Spencer Smith had been chargS d'affaires at Con- 
stantinople from 1796 to 1799, and there was a legend 
of his having married a rich Turkish widow. The 
truth is, his wife was daughter of the Austrian Baron 
Ratzbael. While staying at Venice for her health 
with her two sons in 1806, she was arrested as an 
alleged spy, and was to have been sent on to Valen- 
ciennes, but at Brescia, through the Marquis di Salvo, 
a friendly Sicilian, she escaped by a ladder from the 
window and made her way first to Austria and Russia, 

1 F. 7, 3759. 



42 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

and ultimately to England.^ Napoleon had at the 
same time tried to arrest her husband, then Ambassa- 
dor at Wtirtemberg, but burning his papers he fled 
in time. Occupying himself with archaeology, Smith 
ultimately settled at Caen, where he died. 

William Smith interests us as the grandfather of 
Miss Florence Nightingale, and also of George Eliot's 
friend, Barbara Smith, Madame Bodichon, whose hus- 
band introduced the eucalyptus into Algeria. He is said 
to have been the only English Nonconformist in the 
Parliament of 1802, and his name was given to an 
Act of 1819, which relieved Unitarians from speaking 
of the Trinity in the marriage-service responses. Lord 
Hardwicke's Act of 1752, while repressing irregular 
marriages, had inflicted a grievance on Dissenters by 
requiring all marriages except those of Quakers and 
Jews to be solemnised in churches. Smith, in 1822, 
tried to follow up his success of 1819 by introducing 
civil marriage, but his bill, though passing through 
the Commons, was shelved in the Lords, so that it 
was not till 1836 that Lord John Russell revived and 
carried it. A London merchant, Smith had sat for 
Sudbury and Camelford. On his standing in 1802 for 
Norwich, where Dissenters were and still are numerous, 
Thomas Grenville, foreseeing that he would oust 
Windham, directed his brother the Duke of Bucking- 
ham to return Windham for St. Mawes. ' Smith,' 
said Grenville, 'was cooping up voters in barns and 
houses, where they are kept drunk till the day of poll ; 
and in short, trying all the means of mischief that his 

1 Duchesse d'Abrant^s, Souvenirs ; di Salvo, Travels in 1806. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 43 

fertile talents can supply in the mysteries of election- 
eering.' ^ Smith, who was much respected, sat for 
Norwich till his death in 1835, and was succeeded by 
his son, Benjamin Smith. 

Sturt, member for Bridport since 1784, was bred to 
the sea, but came unexpectedly into possession of the 
family estate in Dorsetshire. He retained, however, 
his liking for the water, had a narrow escape in a 
cutter race, and in 1800 was awarded the Humane 
Society's medal for rescuing a man from drowning. He 
now went to stay at Havre. In 1801 he had obtained 
£100 damages from the Marquis of Blandford, son of 
the Duke of Marlborough, for the seduction of his wife. 
Lady Mary Anne Ashley, daughter of the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, whom he had married in 1788. The damages 
were small because Sturt himself had had an intrigue 
with Madame Krumholz, a famous harpist. Sturt's 
sister, and he himself doubtless, had known Madame 
Dubarry on her visit to London in search of her stolen 
jewels. His nephew and namesake was an eminent 
Australian explorer. His grandson was in 1876 created 
Lord Alington. 

The brothers Thellusson were sons of the Swiss 
merchant Pierre Thellusson, who settled in England, 
married in 1761 Anne Woodford of Southampton, and 
died in 1797, leaving a strange will, by which two- 
thirds of his property was to accumulate until the 
death of his nine then living descendants for the 
benefit of the eldest male descendant of his three 
sons. The sons disputed the will, but it was pro- 

^ Buckingham, Gourt and Cabinets of George III. 



44 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

nounced valid, though an Act of 1800 prevented any 
similar eccentricities. The testator's object, moreover, 
deservedly failed, for the litigation of 1856-1859 on 
the construction of the will devoured a large portion 
of the inheritance, which meanwhile had not inordi- 
nately increased. In visiting Paris the Thellussons 
may have hoped to recover money due to their father, 
for he had been French Consul in London, and was de- 
nounced by John Oswald at the Jacobin Club on the 
30th September 1792, on the authority of Paine and 
Frost, as a vilifier of the Revolution and a friend of 
Pitt. Thellusson, Oswald alleged, had refused to for- 
ward consignments of arms to France. If we are to 
believe a scurrilous pamphlet by Rutledge, Necker, 
who was originally clerk to Thellusson's brother 
George in Paris, made the acquaintance of his future 
wife, Suzanne Curchod, through her being governess 
to the children of the Thellussons' sister, Madame de 
Yermeron. Fournier ^ suggests that the testator's 
object was not for the money to accumulate, but to 
meet the possible claims of descendants of guillotined 
Frenchmen who had intrusted funds to him ; but this 
is obviously far-fetched. The eldest son, who did not 
visit Paris, was in 1806 created Lord Rendlesham. 

Thompson, if, as seems probable, the same m?vn as 
the M.P. for Midhurst 1807-1818, was the father of 
General Thomas Perronet Thompson, M.P., the free- 
trade orator. Tierney spent the summer and autumn 
of 1802 at Boulogne, but did not go on to Paris. One 
would have expected him, however, to search there 

^ Les Hues de Paris. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 45 

for traces of his father, who died during the Revolu- 
tion after thirty years' residence in that capital. Tyrr- 
whitt was secretary to the Prince of Wales, and was 
afterwards Usher of the Black Rod. He was knighted 
in 1814. Yilliers, eventually third Earl of Clarendon, 
was famous for telling long-winded stories. He was 
Envoy to Portugal from 1808 to 1810, and was uncle 
to the diplomatist of our own time. On his honey- 
moon in 1791, on his way to Rome, he saw the French 
king and queen dine in public at the Tuileries. Coulson 
Walhope, son of the Earl of Portsmouth, was on his 
honeymoon trip, from which, as we shall see, he never 
returned. Sir Thomas Wallace had previously visited 
Italy. He subsequently held various public posts, and 
in 1828 became Lord Wallace. Wyndham was brother 
of Lord Egremont ; his other brother William, ambassa- 
dor at Florence, had visited Paris in 1791. Lord 
Yarmouth, son and successor of the Marquis of Hert- 
ford, was destined to be depicted in Vanity Fair as 
Lord Steyne and in Coningshy as Lord Monmouth. 
He had in 1798 married Maria Fagniani, putative 
daughter of John Baptist Fagniani. Her paternity 
was claimed both by George Selwyn and the Marquis 
of Queensberry, commonly known as ' Old Q.' The 
latter bequeathed his property to Lord and Lady 
Yarmouth, a codicil which reduced the amount to 
£250,000 being declared invalid. 

Eight of these M.P.'s, Erskine, Fitzpatrick, Francis, 
Jekyll, St. John, William Smith, Lord R. Spencer, and 
Thompson had voted with Fox in 1794 for peace with 
France. 



46 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Several ex-M.P.'s may be here mentioned. Passing 
over Beckford, of whom we shall speak hereafter, there 
was Philip Champion de Crespigny, King's Proctor, 
who sat for Sudbury in 1796. Sir Harry Featherstone- 
haugh had sat in two Parliaments for Portsmouth. Sir 
Abraham Hume, an F.R.S., had represented Petersfield 
from 1774 to 1780. He collected old paintings, fossils, 
and minerals, and ultimately published a biography of 
Titian. Sir Elijah Impey, ex-Chief- Justice of Bengal, 
had sat for New Romney in 1790. He was sohcitous 
of recovering money invested in the French funds, and 
Madame Grand is said to have welcomed his arrival 
as likely to facilitate proof of the divorce required for 
her marriage to Talleyrand, for Impey had tried Grand's 
suit against her. Sir John Ingilby was elected for East 
Retford in 1781. Temple Luttrell, who sat for Mel- 
bourne Port from 1774 to 1780, was son of Lord Irnham 
and brother to the Earl of Carhampton. His sister 
Anne, widow of Christopher Horton, had married the 
Duke of Cumberland, so that when Luttrell was arrested 
at Boulogne in 1793 he was styled George iii.'s brother- 
in-law. In 1789, as a member of the Jamaica Council, 
he drew up a remonstrance to Parliament against the 
suppression of the slave-trade. He had shown more en- 
lightenment in the House of Commons in advocating 
conciliation to the American colonies and in predicting 
their indomitable resistance. Matthew Montagu, nephew 
and heir of the great society leader Elizabeth Montagu 
{nde Robinson), to whose gatherings the term blue-stock- 
ing was first applied, had sat in Parliament from 1786 
to 1790 and was destined to re-enter it in 1806. In 1820 



NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 47 

he succeeded his brother as Lord Rokeby. Richard 
OHver had in 1790 represented the County Limerick, 
for which his son now sat ; we shall hear of him again. 
William Maule Ramsay, younger son of the Earl of 
Dalhousie, regained his seat in Parliament in 1805. 
In 1831 he was created Lord Panmure, and afterwards 
succeeded his cousin in the title of Lord Dalhousie. 
We shall hear of him, too, again. Henry Seymour, 
a kinsman of the Duke of Somerset, had been the 
penultimate lover of Madame Dubarry.^ He arrived 
with his daughter Georgma, widow of Comte de 
Durfort, as early as the 1st November 1801, but did 
not think it necessary or feasible, it seems, to claim 
the restitution of his private papers, confiscated on 
his flight in 1792. Even if he had claimed them he 
would have missed a bundle of Madame Dubarry's 
love-letters, which had somehow been abstracted, and 
was discovered many years afterwards in a Paris book- 
stall. Possibly having been registered as an emigre, 
as though a foreigner could logically be so treated, he 
feared that to claim his papers might have entailed 
a denial of his right to revisit France. His French 
wife, whom he had dismissed on good grounds, was 
probably the 'Lady' Seymour who in 1806 was living 
on a handsome income at Cleves. Sir Robert Smyth, 
who had been unseated at Cardigan in 1775, but had 
sat for Colchester in 1785-1790, had, like Luttrell, 
suffered imprisonment in Paris during the Revolution, 
but through Paine, with whom his wife corresponded 

^ See my Englishmen in the French Revolution, and Westminster 
Revieiv, January 1897. 



48 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

while he was in prison, had in 1796 obtained a pass- 
port for Hamburg. He now returned to Paris to open 
a bank, but making a journey back to London he 
suddenly died there in April 1802. 

Prospective M.P.'s may here be mentioned. There 
was Lord Althorp, who, just of age, was sent by his 
father Earl Spencer, the great bibliophile, to France and 
Italy in order to cease running into debt and to acquire 
polish; but he refused to go into Continental society, 
was bored by pictures, and came home as unmannerly 
as ever, without having even learned French. He 
nevertheless developed into a prominent Whig states- 
man, and was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Grey 
Cabinet. His accession to the Upper House in 1835 
gave William iv. a pretext for dismissing the ministry. 
He then retired into private life. Alexander Baring, 
son of Sir Francis and afterwards Lord Ashburton, sat 
in the House of Commons from 1806 to 1835, was 
President of the Board of Trade in 1834, and in 1842 
negotiated the Maine Boundary Treaty with America. 
A Mr. Benyon was probably Benjamin Benyon, M.P. for 
Stafford in 1819. Lord Blayney, who in 1806 was 
returned for Old Sarum, was shortly destined to revisit 
France against his will. Sir Charles Burrell, another 
visitor, was elected in the same year for Shoreham. 
Arthur Harrington Champernowne, elected for Saltash 
in 1806, was a friend of Samuel Rogers. Csesar Col- 
clough, who, imprisoned in 1793-1794,^ had apparently 
remained in France, became in 1818 M.P. for Wexford. 
William Congreve, the inventor of the rocket bearing 

1 See my Paris in 1789-1794. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 49 

his name, became in 1812 member for Gatton, and in 
1814 succeeded to his father's baronetcy. Sir Arthur 
Chichester sat for Carrickfergus in 1812, General Sir 
Charles Grogan Craufurd, son of Sir Alexander and 
nephew of Quintin Craufurd, translated Tieck's History 
of the Seven Years' War, and in 1800 had married the 
Dowager-Duchess of Newcastle. Sent as Commissioner 
to the Austrian army, he was wounded, and resigned 
his post in favour of his brother Robert, M.P. for East 
Retford in 1806. He died in 1821. 

Lord Duncannon, who in 1844 succeeded his father 
as Earl of Bessborough, but in 1802 was only just of 
age, supported Catholic Emancipation, introduced 
O'Connell to the House of Commons when he refused to 
take the oath, and helped to frame the Reform Bill. In 
1831 he was Commissioner of Woods and Forests; in 
1834 he was called up to the Lords, and from 1846 till 
his death in 1848 he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 
Robert Ferguson of Raith was a Scottish member in 
1806-1807 and again in 1831-1841. Of him we shall hear, 
not to his credit. Hudson Gurney, a Norwich banker, of 
a famous Quaker family, had an uncle Bartlett Gurney, 
F.S.A., who in 1796 all but defeated Windham at 
Norwich. Bartlett had turned Unitarian, but in 1803 
was buried with the Quakers. Hudson also renounced 
Quakerism, or rather Quakerism renounced him, on 
account of his contributing to the war patriotic fund of 
1804, yet friendly relations were afterwards revived. 
He sat in six parliaments, and died in 1864 at the age 
of eighty-nine. I remember seeing him as a corpulent 
old man, who had to be lifted in and out of his carriage. 

D 



60 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

William Haldimand, son of a Swiss merchant settled 
in London, was so precocious a financier that at twenty- 
five years of age — seven years after his Paris visit — 
he became a director of the Bank of England. His 
brother, who accompanied him, apparently died young. 
William represented Ipswich from 1820 to 1826. He 
was munificent in his gifts to charities and to the Greek 
war of liberation. In 1828 he retired to Lausanne, and 
on his death in 1862 bequeathed most of his property 
to a blind asylum there. His sister was Mrs. Marcet, 
the friend of Sydney Smith, and well known as a 
populariser of science and political economy. Hugh 
Hamersley, M.P. for Helston in 1812, will come under 
another category. Richard Heber, elder brother of 
the bishop, and a great book-collector, was member 
for Oxford University from 1821 to 1826. Sir Thomas 
Liddell, elected for Durham in 1806, became Lord 
Ravensworth and father of a Dean of Christchurch. 
James Mackintosh, who in 1813, on his return from 
Bombay, where he had been recorder, was elected for 
Nairn, and retained the seat till his death in 1832, was 
the author of the famous answer to Burke. Napoleon, 
unaware that he had since 'abhorred, abjured, and 
for ever renounced the French Revolution, the greatest 
scourge of the world, and the chief stain upon human 
annals,' complimented Mackintosh on his pamphlet, 
— or rather intended to have done so — for the order of 
presentations having been altered he addressed the 
compliment to some other Englishman. Shortly after 
his return Mackintosh defended Peltier, prosecuted for 
libelling Napoleon. Viscount Maitland, afterwards 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 51 

Earl of Lauderdale, was returned for Camelford in 1806. 
William (afterwards Sir William) Oglander sat for 
Bodmin. Viscount Ossulston sat for Berwick in 1820. 
Samuel Romilly, who in 1806 became Solicitor-General 
and M.P, for Queensborough, was the great advocate of 
the mitigation of the penal code, so as to limit capital 
punishment to cases of murder. He had seen Paris in 
August 1789. Sir William Rowley represented Suffolk 
in 1812, Sir Thomas Turton, Southwark in 1810-1820, 
and Sir Walter Stirling, St. Ives in 1807. William 
Young, whose father wrote a history of Athens, sat for 
St. Mawes and became Governor of Tobago. 

There was a perfect swarm of peers and peers' sons ; ^ 
the elderly or middle-aged anxious to see how Paris 
looked after the Revolution, the younger eager to make 
acquaintance with it. Some, moreover, were on their 
way to Italy, for Lemaitre found at Naples, in February 
1803, Lords Aberdeen, Mount Cashell, Grantham, Al- 
thorp, Brooke, and Beverley, besides Sir Charles Douglas, 
Sir Thomas Tancred, and the Cheshire Egertons, with 
Lady Hester Stanhope in their charge. The Dowager- 
Duchess of Cumberland, whose marriage led to the Royal 
Marriage Act, a widow since 1790, was also on her way to 
Nice, but stayed a month in Paris for medical advice. 
According to the Times she paid a hundred guineas a 
month for second-rate apartments, and not having been 
presented at the Court of St. James's was not received by 
Madame Bonaparte, although previously to the Revolu- 
tion she had been treated at Metz as a royal personage. 

The Duke of Bedford interests us chiefly as the father 

^ See Appendix B. 



52 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

of Lord John Russell, then a boy of eleven, who was 
left behind with his two brothers at school. The Duke 
was not a stranger to France. In March 1788 he and 
his wife, the latter on the verge of her confinement, 
were staying at Montpellier and waiting for that event. 
Her father, Viscount Torrington, who was apparently 
living in Paris, wrote to Louis xvi.'s Minister of the 
Household to ask what should be done to certify the 
expected birth. This was of some importance, for the 
traveller's elder brother was unlikely to marry. The 
Minister advised him to call in two local notaries, 
adding that it might be well to get a certificate also 
from the British Embassy at Paris.^ The child was born 
on the 13th May, and became heir to the Duke of 
Bedford, for his father had in March 1802 succeeded 
his brother, who bequeathed £5000 to Fox. He had 
learned French when a youth at Orleans, together with 
the Duke of Cleveland, and the Duke of Dorset then 
took them both to Versailles, where Marie Antoinette 
played billiards with them. Both went on to Rome 
where they went to Cardinal York's weekly receptions. 
Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh was now his travelling 
companion. The Duke's arrival on the 20th April 
1803 was considered a sign of the duration of peace, 
but he apparently went over to fetch the Duchess 
of Gordon and her daughter Lady Georgina, whom 
he, a widower since October 1801, took for his second 
wife five weeks after his return. Georgina had been 
engaged to his deceased brother, who left her a lock of 
his hair, and her mother made her go into mourning 
1 O. 1, 486. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 53 

for him, saying, ' It is a feather in a girl's cap to have 
been intended for the Duke of Bedford.' ^ The Duchess 
was reported to have said that she hoped to see 
Napoleon breakfast in Ireland, dine in London, and sup 
at Gordon Castle, but this is a manifest invention. 
There may be more truth in the story that she obtained 
recruits in 1794 for her son's Highland regiment (now 
the 2nd Gordon Highlanders) by placing a shilling 
between her lips to be kissed by them, yet this seems 
a variation of the Duchess of Devonshire's kiss to a 
Westminster elector. She died in 1812. As for her 
daughter Georgina, who had an illness in Paris, she was 
a great dancer, and frequently danced, as Napoleon 
told Lord Ebrington at Elba in 1814, with his step-son 
Eugene Beauharnais. The Times, indeed, insinuated 
that she set her cap at the step-father himself. ' It is 
certain,' said that journal on the 12th January 1803, 

' that some of our travelHng Nudes of Fashion intended to 
conquer the Conqueror of the Continent. What glory 
would it have brought to this Country, if it could have 
boasted of giving a Mistress, or a Wife, to the First Consul. 

How pretty would sound Lady G (we mean Lady 

Godiva) Bonaparte ? ' 

Wraxall's story that the Duchess wanted to wed her 
daughter to Eugene is confirmed by Maurice Dupin, 
George Sand's father, who met them at a dinner-party, 
and wrote to his mother that they were in love with 
each other, but that Napoleon would not listen to the 

^ Life of Lord Minto. Two other daughters married the Duke of 
Richmond and Marquis Cornwallis. 



54 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

match. Georgina, he added, was reputed a beauty, but 
like Eugene lacked a good mouth and teeth.^ 

The Duke of Newcastle, afterwards famous for justi- 
fying the eviction at Newark of forty tenants who refused 
to vote for his nominee by saying, 'May I not do what I 
will with my own ? ' was destined to give Gladstone his 
first seat in the House of Commons ; which Gladstone, 
however, resigned in 1846 on joining Peel in free- 
trade. The Duke was yet only a youth of seventeen, in 
charge of his step-father Sir Charles Craufurd, who 
has been already mentioned. The Duke of Somerset 
deserves notice only as the father of the Duke of our 
time, who was first Lord of the Admiralty and an 
agnostic writer. 

The Marchioness of Donegal was accompanied by her 
sisters Mary and Philippa Godfrey, friends of Thomas 
Moore. The Marquis and Marchioness of Tweeddale 
(she was daughter of Lord Lauderdale) took with them 
their young son, Lord James Hay. 

Of the Earls, Aberdeen — Byron's ' travelled thane, 
Athenian Aberdeen ' — was the future Prime Minister of 
1852. His six weeks in Paris were said to have cost him 
£3000. Lady Bessborough had been at school at Ver- 
sailles before the Revolution, and had been noticed by 
Marie Antoinette. Beverley, a son of the Duke of North- 
umberland, had been created a peer in 1790. He had 
distinguished himself by his courage during the riots 
of 1780, and we have already heard of his son. Cadogan 
had divorced his wife in 1796, so that she travelled by 
herself. Camelford had refused to illuminate for the 

^ George Sand, Mdmoires. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 55 

peace, and his house had consequently been sacked. 
He pretended in 1801 to be an American named Rush- 
worth, but was arrested, and after some days expelled. 
In March 1803 he again landed at Calais, but was dis- 
covered and apprehended, for he was said to have 
boasted in London that he would kill Bonaparte. He 
wrote, however, from the Temple prison an abject letter 
to Napoleon, pleading that his mother would die if she 
heard of his arrest. He also threw out of the window 
a letter to Lord Grenville, which the picker-up was 
requested to forward, but it was intercepted. He was 
sent to Boulogne and shipped to England.^ Jackson 
was afraid of his committing suicide, so that he must 
have shown symptoms of the mental derangement 
which led in 1804 to a fatal duel with Captain Best. 
He was reputed to be the best shot in England. Car- 
hampton had in 1796 been commander-in-chief in 
Ireland. It was reported that incensed at having, 
in company with other English, to wait three hours 
in an anteroom without chairs, before being received 
by Talleyrand, he went next day to the Tuileries in 
colonel's uniform without epaulettes. Bonaparte asked 
him therefore whether he was a militia officer. ' No,' 
he proudly repHed. 'Then what is your rank in the 
army ? ' 'I was Commander-in-Chief when the French 
army under General Hoche endeavoured to land in 
Ireland.'^ It was scarcely fair of Carhampton thus to 
retaliate on Napoleon for Talleyrand's discourtesy. 

1 F. 7, 6307, 6339, 6534, 6481. He seems to have tried to conceal this 
adventure, alleging that he had been courteously received by Napoleon, 
which may have been true, but was not the whole truth. 

2 Times, December 21, 1802. 



56 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Cavan had just returned from Egypt, where he 
had commanded a division under Abercromby. The 
Cholmondeleys had been in Paris in 1791, their son 
and heir being born there. We shall hear presently 
of their equipages. The Countess (afterwards Mar- 
chioness) Conyngham is notorious for her liaison 
with George iv, Egremont was long a prominent 
figure in London society, but is more deserving of 
notice as one of the earliest patrons of Turner the 
artist. Elgin, of marble fame, was on his way home 
from the Constantinople embassy. We shall have to 
speak hereafter of his wife and her paramour Ferguson. 
Fife, afterwards a distinguished general in the Penin- 
sular War, wounded at Talavera and Cadiz, was great- 
uncle of the present Duke of Fife. Fitzwilliam had 
in 1794 been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, where his 
three months' rule was looked back to with regret. 
Lady Granard, sister of the Earl of Moira, on her 
honeymoon in 1780 had seen Cardinal York, and had 
also witnessed a review by Frederic ii. Guilford was 
the son of the Lord North who lost us our American 
colonies. He stayed seven months, and would have 
remained longer but for the rupture. 

Lady Kenmare (Mary, daughter of Michael Aylmer) 
was known for her Sunday evening receptions in 
London, and for a romantic story of her husband's 
attachment to her before his first wife's death, or even 
before his first marriage. A Gerald Aylmer, who also 
visited Paris, was probably her kinsman. The Countess 
of Kingston, who must not be confused with the 
Duchess of Kingston, the notorious bigamist, was 



NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 57 

accompanied by two unmarried daughters, probably 
also by her other daughter, Lady Mount Cashell. One 
of these daughters had in 1798 been the occasion of a 
duel in which her brother shot his adversary. Lady 
Lanesborough, daughter of the Earl of Belvedere, had, 
as we shall see, found a second and plebeian husband. 
Lauderdale had witnessed and sympathised with the 
Revolution, Dr. (father of Sir John) Moore then accom- 
panying him as physician. His Whig opinions had 
made him lose his seat as a Scottish representative peer 
in the House of Lords, and his anxiety for the main- 
tenance of peace made Whitworth shut his door to 
him as one of 'our rascally countrymen.'^ His son, 
moreover, a youth of eighteen, styled himself ' citizen ' 
Maitland.2 Minto, the Gilbert Elliot who, ward of 
David Hume, was at school with Mirabeau, and was 
consequently sent over in 1790 to bribe him into keep- 
ing France neutral in our threatened quarrel with 
Spain over Nootka Sound, had been Governor of 
Corsica. He was one of the earliest visitors, was on 
his way home from the Vienna Embassy, and was 
destined to be Viceroy of India. Mount Edgecumbe 
was an amateur actor and musical composer. His 
wife,^ with their young daughter Emma Sophia, after- 
wards Countess Brownlow and writer of Reminiscences 
of a Septuagenarian, had previously been to Spa, where 
she met the Duchess of Gordon, the Conynghams, the 
Bradfords, Charles and Lady Charlotte Greville, and 

^ Cholmondeley and Guilford had also in 1794 voted for peace. 
^ Notes and Queries, February 6, 1892. 

3 Lady Sophia Hobart, daughter of the Earl of Buckinghamshire, 
had been educated at the Bernardine convent at Paris. 



58 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Dudley and Lady Susan Ryder. She had a serious 
illness in Paris. Lord Oxford had a great admiration 
for Napoleon and also for Murat. His wife, who re- 
quired change of climate, was very handsome, though 
not rivalling Madame Tallien. Pembroke was the 
father of Sidney Herbert, the statesman of our time, 
and in 1806 was Ambassador at Vienna. He stayed 
three months, and being an excellent observer and a 
patient listener, his account of Paris was eagerly sought 
for. Shaftesbury, uncle of the philanthropist of our 
day, took his wife, a daughter of Sir John Webb, and 
their daughter. Winchilsea was the father of the 
fanatical Orangeman who in 1829 fought a duel, on 
account of Catholic Emancipation, with Wellington, 
but happily without bloodshed. Viscount Falkland, 
less fortunate, was killed in a duel in 1809. Vis- 
countess Maynard was the notorious Nancy Parsons 
whom Lord Maynard had married in 1766, in spite 
of her antecedents. She had been a widow since 
1775, and had been the mistress of the late Duke of 
Bedford, who, by his will, continued his annuity to 
her of £2000. Lord Monck, who took over his wife 
and two daughters, was the grandfather of the Viceroy 
of Canada. He died shortly after his return, in June 
1802. Viscount Strangford was afterwards Ambassador 
at Lisbon, Stockholm, Constantinople, and St. Peters- 
burg, and translated Camoens' Lusiad. Moore, Rogers, 
and Croker were among his friends. 

We now come to the lowest grade of the peerage. 
Barrington, leaving a wife behind, but taking a mis- 
tress with him, probably went, from what we after- 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 59 

wards hear, to escape his English creditors; but we 
shall find that he got into debt in France. Blayney 
has been already mentioned among prospective M.P.'s, 
for, being an Irish peer like Palmerston, he was eligible 
for the Lower House. Cahir, who crossed over as early 
as June 1801, was afterwards created Earl of Glengall; 
he remained till April 1802. Invitations to Madame 
Bonaparte's receptions were commonly obtained through 
his wife's good offices. Lady Carington was the wife 
of one of Pitt's banker peers. There was a rumour 
that Pitt intended to marry her eldest daughter. It 
was her grandson who, in 1872, having horsewhipped 
Grenville Murray on the steps of the Reform Club on 
account of a scurrilous article on his family in Broad 
Arrow, was convicted of assault at Clerkenwell sessions, 
but was simply bound over to keep the peace. Murray 
shortly afterwards became an outlaw. Cloncurry in 
1859 published his reminiscences. He was accom- 
panied by his three sisters, of whom more anon. He 
dined with Napoleon, and made acquaintance with 
Kosciusko, Helen WilHams, and Madame Recamier. 
He invited the two Emmets to dinner the day before 
Robert's return to Ireland, from which he could not 
be dissuaded, Cloncurry in the winter of 1802 pro- 
ceeded to Italy, where he presented a telescope to 
Cardinal York, who gave him one of his medals, and 
he returned home after the rupture by way of Ger- 
many.^ Lady Crofton, widow of Sir Thomas Crofton, 
was a baroness in her own right. Her daughter 
Frances accompanied her. Grantham, who was on 

^ Cloncurry, Recollections. 



60 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

his way to Italy, in 1833 succeeded liis aunt in the 
De Grey earldom. He was first Lord of the Admiralty 
in 1834-1835, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1841- 
1844, was a collector of sculptures, was President of the 
Institution of British Architects, and published Char- 
acteristics of the Duke of Wellington. He was uncle 
of the present Marquis of Ripon, ex- Viceroy of India. 
HoUand, who had seen Paris in 1791, protested in 
1815 against Napoleon's captivity at St, Helena, and 
Lady Holland, the divorced wife of Sir Godfrey Webster, 
forwarded the prisoner books, in gratitude for which 
kindness Napoleon sent her an antique diamond pre- 
sented to him by the Pope, Lady Holland's receptions 
were afterwards famous. Hutchinson had succeeded 
Sir Ralph Abercromby in Egypt. On his brother's 
death he became Earl of Donoughmore. In the 
autumn of 1789 he had applied at Paris for an escort 
to go and rejoin his family near Amiens, disturbances 
having broken out there, but was told that order had 
been restored. He was Lafayette's aide-de-camp from 
1789 to 1792. Northwick was an art connoisseur. 
Stawell was Surveyor of Customs for the Port of 
London. 

Of the eldest sons or other successors of peers, 
Eardley deserves notice on account of the history of 
his family. Sampson Gideon, a Portuguese Jew, made 
a fortune in London, and as a reward for financial 
services obtained a baronetcy, not for himself, for a 
Jew was then deemed ineligible, but for his son, then 
at Eton, at the age of fifteen. That son, Sampson the 
second, was brought up a Christian by his EngUsh 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 61 

motlier, and was nicknamed 'Mr. Pitt's Jew.' In 1789 
he was made an Irish peer as Lord Eardley, a title 
explained by his having married, in 1766, Maria, the 
daughter of Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Chief-Justice of 
the Common Pleas. He was elected first for Coventry 
and afterwards for Wallingford, but retired in 1802. 
He had two sons, Sampson and William; the former 
was the visitor to Paris, but both died before their 
father, with whom the peerage expired in 1824. His 
three daughters married Lord Say and Sele, Sir Culling 
Smith, M.P., and Colonel Childers. Childers, the well- 
known member of the Gladstone Cabinet, was doubly 
descended from Pitt's Jew, for his father was an 
Eardley Childers, and his mother a Culling Smith. 
Colonel Molesworth was drowned with his wife on his 
way to the Cape in 1815. 

The younger sons of peers comprised Arthur Annesley 
(son of Viscount Annesley), Lord William Bentinck, 
afterwards Viceroy of India (Duke of Portland), William 
Brodrick (Viscount Midleton), Lord John Campbell 
(Duke of Argyll), Lord George Cavendish (Duke of 
Devonshire), Robert Clifford (Lord Clifford), Colonel 
Robert Clive (Lord Clive), Edward Spencer Cowper 
(Earl Cowper), Keppel Craven (Lord Craven), Francis 
Oust (Earl Brownlow), Henry Dillon (Viscount Dillon), 
Lord Robert Stephen Fitzgerald (Duke of Leinster), 
Lord Archibald Hamilton (Duke of Hamilton), Wil- 
liam Hill (Lord Berwick), John King (Lord King), George 
Knox (Lord Northland), Lord Frederic Montagu (Duke 
of Manchester), Augustus John Francis Moreton (Earl 
of Ducie), Arthur Paget (Lord Uxbridge), Henry 



62 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Pierrepont (Viscount Newark), Lord Arthur Somerset 
(Duke of Beaufort), John Talbot (Baroness Talbot de 
Malahide), and John Trevor (Viscount Hampden). 
Charles James Fox, Edward Paget, General Fitzpatrick 
Lord Robert Spencer, and Charles Wyndham, have 
been already mentioned as M.P.'s. 

There were also several daughters of peers. Lady 
Elizabeth Foster, widow of John Thomas Foster, M.P., 
was daughter of the Earl of Bristol, and there were 
strange stories of her relations with the Duke of 
Devonshire. According to the generally accepted 
version^ the Duchess, famous in election annals, was 
forced by her parents, at sixteen years of age, to marry 
the Duke, though she was in love with the Duke of 
Hamilton, who killed himself in despair. She refused, 
however, to allow him the rights of a husband, and 
Lady Elizabeth Foster, living harmoniously with them, 
had several children by the Duke, who were brought 
up under an assumed name. In 1789, however, the 
Duchess losing £100,000 at play at Spa, the Duke 
went over and paid her debts on condition of con- 
summating the marriage. The result was the birth of 
a son and heir at Paris in January 1790. The Duchess 
died in 1806, and three years afterwards Lady Elizabeth 
agreed to marry the widower. Gainsborough painted 
her as Lady Foster in the picture mysteriously stolen 
in London in 1875 and recovered in America in 1900. 
She was now accompanied to Paris by her legitimate 
son, Augustus John Foster, who was just of age. In 
1811 he was sent as Envoy to Washington, in 1814 to 

^ See article on Spa in Nineteenth Century, October 1902. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 63 

Copenhagen, and in 1824 to Turin. In 1831 he received 
a baronetcy. Lady Isabel Style, daughter of Lord 
Powerscourt, and widow since 1774 of Sir Charles 
Style, had been a prisoner in France in 1793, and now 
revisited France. Lady Anne Saltmarsh was daughter 
of the Earl of Fingall. Lady Hester Stanhope, 
daughter of Earl Stanhope, who was not yet her uncle 
Pitt's housekeeper, was, to avoid a stepmother, travel- 
ling with the Egertons, probably Sir Peter Warburton 
Egerton. 

There was also Lady Mary Whaley, n^e Lawless, 
the widow since 1800 of an Irish M.P., nicknamed 
Jerusalem Whaley, for, having said in joke that he 
was going to Jerusalem, he won a bet (of £15,000 it 
is said) that he would really go thither. At sixteen 
years of age this Thomas Whaley, inheriting £15,000 
from his father, was sent to Paris with a ' bear-leader ' 
to learn French. He there bought a town and country 
house, kept a pack of hounds, entertained company, 
and gambled, losing £14,000 at a sitting. He returned 
to Ireland, compounded with his creditors, and squan- 
dered the Jerusalem bet money. He revisited Paris in 
1791, and witnessed the King's return from Varennes. 
He became a cripple for life by jumping from a draw- 
ing-room window on to the roof of a passing hackney- 
coach, or, as we should now say, cab.^ He gambled at 
Newmarket, Brighton, and London, and eventually 
settled in the Isle of Man, where he brought up an 
illegitimate family.^ He married, in January 1800, 

^ Cloncurry, Recollections. 

^ Monthly Review, December 1800. 



64 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Lady Mary Catherine Lawless, daughter of Lord 
Cloncurry, but died in the following November, His 
widow lived till 1831. She was accompanied by her 
sister, Lady Valentia Lawless, who afterwards married 
Sir Francis Burton, Lord Conyngham's half-brother, 
and by Lady Charlotte, who became Lady Dunsany. 
There was likewise a Lady Giffard, probably Lady 
Charlotte Courtenay, daughter of the Earl of Devon, 
who in 1788 had married Thomas Giffard of Chill- 
ington, Staffordshire. Lady Charlotte Greville, nee 
Charlotte Bentinck, daughter of the Duke of Portland, 
was there with her husband Charles Greville, father of 
the diarist. Miss Caroline Vernon, maid of honour to 
the Queen, was a daughter of Lord Vernon and died in 
1815. Lady Catherine Beauclerk was daughter of the 
Duke of St Albans. 

The baronets included, besides several already men- 
tioned, William Call, John Chichester, Simon Clark, 
John Coghill, William Cooper, James Craufurd, Her- 
bert Croft, Thomas Clavering, Michael Cromie, George 
Dallas, James De Bathe, Beaumont Dixie, N. Dukin- 
field, Alexander Grant, John Honywood, John Hope, 
John Ingilby, William James, Richard Jodrell, Thomas 
Lavie, John Morshead, George Prescott, George Shipley, 
Charles Talbot, Thomas Tancred, Grenville Temple, 
Henry Tichborne, Thomas Webb, Robert John Wilmot, 
and Charles Wolseley. 

Some of these will be mentioned hereafter. At 
present we need speak only of Sir Charles Wolsele}?^, 
who, like Sir Francis Burdett, boxed the political com- 
pass. He witnessed, and apparently took part in, the 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 65 

capture of the BastiUe. In 1819 the Birmingham 
Radicals nominated him their so-called 'legislatorial 
attorney/ and in the following year he was sentenced 
to eighteen months' imprisonment for a seditious 
speech at Stockport. He ultimately gave up political 
life, embraced Catholicism in 1837, and died in 1846. 

Then there were also sons of baronets : William 
Abdy, who succeeded to the title in July 1803, Ashby 
Apreece, who predeceased his father in 1807, Alex- 
ander Don, Charles Jerningham, Raymond Pelly, John 
Wombwell, formerly a merchant at AHcante, Ralph 
Woodford, afterwards Governor of Bermuda, John 
Broughton, and William Oglander, who, already men- 
tioned, succeeded to the title in 1806, while there 
were two future baronets, Thomas Hare and Charles 
Cockerell. 

Next to legislators and aristocrats, military men were 
the most numerous class of visitors. Some passed 
through Paris on their way home from Egypt, which 
had just been evacuated, and others were actuated not 
so much by curiosity or love of dissipation as by pro- 
fessional duty, for they did not know how soon they 
might not have to encounter Bonaparte's legions. Of 
this swarm of visitors I can only mention a few. There 
were the two sons of Sir Ralph Abercromby, who had 
been killed at Alexandria. The elder was General 
George already mentioned, who, eventually succeeding 
his mother in the peerage, became Lord Abercromby. 
The younger. Colonel Sir John, served with distinction, 
but died at forty-four years of age without reaching the 
highest grade. Sir Charles Ash worth became a general. 

E 



66 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Captain Benjamin Bathurst, son of the Bishop of Nor- 
wich, then eighteen years of age, was the diplomatist 
who in 1809 mysteriously disappeared on returning 
from a mission to Vienna. Napoleon was accused of 
having him murdered, but the probability is that he 
was killed for the sake of his valuables by the ostler 
of a German inn who was afterwards unaccountably 
affluent. His daughter Rose, at the age of seventeen, 
was drowned at Rome in 1824 by her horse slipping 
backwards into the Tiber, and his brother in a race 
at Rome was killed by a fall from his horse. Three 
disasters in one family. 

William Bosville, commonly styled Colonel, though 
he had only been a lieutenant in the Guards, must be 
ranked with soldiers for want of any other suitable 
category, though he was more wit than soldier. He 
had, however, served in the American War. He dined 
every Sunday with Home Tooke, and, as we have seen, 
accompanied Sir F. Burdett, whose election he had 
zealously promoted. He dressed like a courtier of 
George ii.'s time. He visited Cobbett in prison and 
presented him with £1000. Paine, on reaching the 
United States, sent a message to ' my good friend Bos- 
ville.' Francis Burke, who had been in the Franco- 
Irish brigade, became a British general. 

General James Callender had served in the Seven 
Years' War and had been Secretary to the Paris 
Embassy under the Duke of Dorset, who, on his recall 
in October 1789, deputed him to wind up his accounts. 
He had more recently been Inspector- General at 
Naples, and had been sent by Nelson to the Ionian 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 67 

Islands, where he remained till the peace. While in 
Paris he made the acquaintance of a Madame Sassen, 
a German, and on being detained he sent her to Scot- 
land with a power of attorney, styling her his beloved 
wife, to see after his affairs. When released, however, 
he denied having married her, and the Court of Session 
declared the marriage not proven, but awarded the lady 
£300 damages. This latter decision was annulled by 
the House of Lords, and the lady passed the rest of her 
life in fruitless litigation. Callender, who married three 
times, died in 1832 at the age of eighty-seven. The 
French Police Register describes him, the reason why 
is not obvious, as a swindler. On succeeding in 1810 to 
the estates of his cousin. Sir Alexander Campbell, he 
assumed the baronetcy also, but without right to it.^ 
General John Francis Cradock had served in India and 
in Egypt, was destined to serve in Spain, and in 1819 
became Lord Howden. He altered the spelling of his 
name to Caradoc. His son, aide-de-camp to Wellington 
in Paris in 1814, and afterwards military attache at the 
Paris Embassy, there married in 1830 the widow of the 
Russian General Bagration, an ex-mistress of Metter- 
nich. In July 1830 he was deputed by the Duke of 
Orleans to follow the fugitive Charles x. and ask him 
to confide to him his grandson that he might be pro- 
claimed king. Charles was inclined to consent, but the 
child's mother, the Duchess of Berri, dissuaded him, not 
thinking that her boy would be in safe keeping. On 
Caradoc reporting his failure Louis Philippe accepted 
the crown. 

^ Notes and Queries, May 4, 1901. 



68 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

James Ferrier, brother of Susan the novehst, had 
figured in the siege of Seringapatam, and was ques- 
tioned about it by Napoleon, always interested in India, 
which he thought he should have conquered but for 
Sir Sidney Smith and Acre. ' When he speaks,' Ferrier 
wrote home to his sister, 'he has one of the finest 
expressions possible.' General Dalrymple had visited 
Paris in 1791. General Henry Edward Fox was a 
brother of the great statesman. He was on his way 
home from Egypt, where he had refused to allow Lord 
Cavan to ship Cleopatra's needle.^ Cavan had dug it 
out of the sand of centuries and set it upright, but Fox 
seems to have thought Cavan's love of antiquities an 
absurd craze, and the needle consequently had to wait 
seventy years for transport to England. Afterwards 
Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, Ambassador at 
Palermo, and Governor of Portsmouth, Fox was 
accompanied by his son Stephen, also destined for 
diplomacy. General George Higginson, who married 
in 1825 a daughter of Lord Kilmorey, lived till 1866, 
and his widow reached the age of ninety-eight, sur- 
viving till 1890. General Baron Charles Hompesch 
was a Hanoverian in the English service. Very short- 
sighted, in 1806 he brushed against a man named 
Richardson and two ladies in a London street, and 
a duel ensued, in which his antagonist was wounded. 
On his death in 1822, at the age of sixty-six, he could 
boast of having taken part in three sieges, seven pitched 
battles, and thirteen minor engagements. Robert Love- 
lace, probably a son of Robert Lovelace of Clapham, 

1 Courrier de Londres, July 1802. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 69 

was reminded by Napoleon that he bore the name of 
Richardson's hero. Napoleon at eighteen had devoured 
Clarissa Harlowe, but at St. Helena he found it un- 
readable. 

General John Money served in America under 
Burgoyne, and not finding employment at home had 
fought for the Belgian insurgents in 1788, had joined 
the French army in 1792, and had witnessed the 
capture of the Tuileries. The German (Eisner, who 
met him at Verdun in October 1792, describes him 
as a thoroughly English Hotspur {degenkopf)} In 
1761, aide-de-camp to General Townshend, he was 
famed for standing on a horse's back without a 
saddle and then leaping with it at full speed over a 
five-barred gate. Hyde Park was the scene of his 
feats of horsemanship. He had a perilous balloon 
ascent in 1785, being nearly drowned in the North 
Sea. George Monro, probably a son of Sir Harry 
Monro, M.P., was apparently the Captain George 
Monro who was sent to Paris in September 1792 to 
send reports after the suspension of diplomatic rela- 
tions.^ He had to pretend to fraternise with the 
British Jacobins in Paris, but he became suspected 
and left in January 1793. In 1796 he complained 
that though promised a handsome provision no fresh 
post had been conferred on him.^ General George 
Morgan, who went on to Nice, had been Commander- 
in-Chief in India, Sir Hildebrand Oakes, afterwards 



^ Minerva, January 1793. 

- See my Englishmen in the French Revolution. 

^ Dropmore Papers, iii. 286, 472. 



70 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Governor of Malta, had served in America and Egypt. 
Captain Charles John O'Hara was doubtless one of 
the illegitimate sons of the general who should have 
married Mary Berry, and who was captured by the 
French at Toulon in 1793. Captain Samuel Owens 
was an equerry to George iii. Major William Nor- 
man Ramsay had served in Egypt, was afterwards in 
the Peninsula, and was killed at Waterloo. Colonel 
John Rowley, of the Engineers, was an F.R.S. and 
inspector-general of fortifications. He became a 
general in 1821, and died in 1824, General Sir 
Charles Shipley, a distinguished military engineer, 
became in 1813 Governor of Granada. Colonel 
Edward Stack, a native of Kerry, had served in the 
Franco-Irish brigade before the Revolution, had been 
aide-de-camp to Louis xv., and had accompanied 
Lafayette to America. He was on board Paul Jones's 
Bonhomme Richard when it captured the Serapis. 
He belonged to the orders of St. Louis and Cincin- 
natus. He joined the dTnigrds at Coblentz, but after- 
wards entered the English army, in which he rose 
during his detention in France to be major-general. 
He was arrested as a spy in May 1803, but was liber- 
ated on parole. If his age is correctly registered as 
forty-five in 1802, he was seventy-six at his death at 
Calais in 1833. 

Captain Francis TuUoch, of the Artillery, had in 
singular circumstances made the acquaintance of 
Chateaubriand. Converted to Catholicism in London 
in 1790 by the Abbe Nagot, he had been induced to 
resign his commission and to sail with Nagot and 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 71 

three other priests from St. Malo for Baltimore, in order 
to become a priest and settle in America. Chateau- 
briand, a fellow-passenger, remonstrated with him, 
urging that, however ardent a Catholic, he ought not 
to abandon his family and his profession. The young 
man seemed to listen to him, but the priests re- 
covered their ascendency, and on reaching port he 
left with them, not even bidding Chateaubriand fare- 
well. He must, nevertheless, have changed his pur- 
pose, for in 1802 he was still in the army, and he 
eventually married and had seven children, two of 
whom wedded French noblemen. In 1822 Tulloch 
renewed acquaintance with Chateaubriand, then Am- 
bassador at London. In 1827 there were family 
differences among his children, which gave rise to 
recriminatory pamphlets. Lastly, there was John 
Alexander Woodford, son of Sir Ralph Woodford 
(afterwards Governor of Trinidad, Envoy to the Hanse 
towns, and to Denmark). He was apparently the 
Colonel Woodford who in 1815 began digging up the 
bones of the killed at the battle of Agincourt, exciting 
such a commotion in the district that the French 
Government asked the Duke of Wellington to stop 
him. 

Naval officers had less inducement to visit Paris, 
yet a number of them figure on the register. One 
of them, moreover, was a claimant to a French duke- 
dom. Philippe d'Auvergne, a Jersey man, son of a 
navy lieutenant, had been adopted in 1788 by the 
last Due de Bouillon, a descendant of Turenne, as 
a remote kinsman and heir (his only son being an 



72 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

idiot), in preference to nearer relations whom he dis- 
liked.^ The fascinating young sailor, whose elder brother 
had declined the heirship, lived with the old duke 
till the Revolution, when he rejoined the English 
navy, and from his station at Montorgueil in Jersey 
superintended the despatch of men and money to 
assist the Chouans. The duke having died in 1802, 
d'Auvergne now went over to try and recover his con- 
fiscated estates, but the French Government arrested 
him in September 1802 on the ground of his co- 
operation in the civil war. If a French duke he was 
of course liable to punishment, but if still or again 
a British subject he could not be prosecuted for 
the performance of professional duties. Merry, his 
letter to whom was at first suppressed, claimed him 
as a British subject, and he was released after about 
a week from the Temple but expelled. Major Du- 
maresq, a fellow Jersey man, had been arrested with 
him. D'Auvergne rose to be an admiral, but the 
Congress of Vienna rejected his pretensions to the 
dukedom. His romantic career ended in 1816 at the 
age of seventy-one. Admiral ToUemache (afterwards 
Lord Huntingtower) had an adventure at Paris. He 
was playing billiards when a French bully nudged 
his arm and spoilt his stroke. On the man doing 
this a second time ToUemache pitched him out of 
the window and then, warned by the landlord, ran 
for his life.2 Other actual or prospective admirals 
included Sir Eliab Harvey, who fought at Trafalgar, 

1 Lord Sheffield and his daughter visited Bouillon in 1791. 
^ Fortnightly Revieiv, July 1892. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 73 

Francis Ommaney, William Hoste, Robert Dudley 
Oliver, John (afterwards Sir John) Talbot, John 
Temple, Sir John West, Sir James Hawkins Whit- 
shed, and Sir Edward Berry. Nelson, on being con- 
doled with by George iii. on the loss of his right arm, 
presented Berry as his right hand, and it was Berry 
who caught him in his arms when wounded at the 
battle of the Nile. 

But the most interesting and tragic naval visitor 
was Captain John Wesley Wright, an Irishman and 
secretary to Sir Sidney Smith. He had in 1796 been 
captured and imprisoned with Smith, and had escaped 
with him by means of a forged order. He was sent 
in March 1803 as an attache to the Paris Embassy, 
albeit Whitworth pointed out to his Government that 
this was a very injudicious selection. Whether he 
remained at the embassy till Whitworth's departure 
is not clear, but in May 1804 he was again captured 
off the coast, where he had been landing royalist 
insurgents. He was consequently regarded as an 
accomplice of Georges in the conspiracy to assassin- 
ate Napoleon, and was again confined in the Temple. 
Gravina, the Spanish Ambassador, interceded for his 
being treated as a prisoner of war, but Napoleon 
replied that as a criminal he could not be exchanged 
for an honest French officer, though he might be given 
up to the British Government to be dealt with as it 
chose, he being convinced that Lord Hawkesbury 
(afterwards Lord Liverpool) was alone responsible for 
having thrice landed conspirators against his life. 
This overture, if indeed it was an overture, came to 



74 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

notliing, and at Georges' trial Wright was brought up 
as a witness. He was threatened with sentence of 
death by court-martial if he refused to give testimony, 
but he insisted on the status of a prisoner of war, 
responsible solely to his own Government for his acts. 
In October 1805 he attempted to escape, whereupon 
Napoleon ordered the 'wretched assassin' to be im- 
mured in a cell in lieu of having the run of the 
building. On the 25th October he was found dead 
in his cell. He seems to have been a religious man, 
and a few days before, on his mathematical instru- 
ments being taken from him, he had emphatically 
repudiated resort to suicide. Moreover he had on the 
previous day ordered three shirts and a French con- 
versation book. The French Government, however, 
maintained that he had killed himself on hearing of 
the defeat and surrender of the Austrian army at Ulm. 
Sidney Smith, on revisiting France after Waterloo, 
made minute inquiries, and all the documents were 
shown him, but he could come to no positive result. 
Lewis Goldsmith says he was told by R6al and Des- 
marets that Wright had been tortured like Pichegru 
in order to extract evidence from him, and con- 
sequently could not have been released without this 
infamy committed by Fouche being exposed; but he 
was certainly not tortured prior to Georges' trial, and 
why should he have been tortured afterwards, or, if 
tortured, why should he have been allowed to live till 
October 1805 ? Sidney Smith erected a monument 
over his tomb in Pere Lachaise. It had a long Latin 
inscription which, without directly accusing the Napo- 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 75 

leonic authorities, insinuated foul play, for it described 
Smith as ' confined in the Temple, a prison infamous 
for its midnight murders.' Strange to say this monu- 
ment is now undiscoverable, and the cemetery keepers 
deny that Wright is on their registers, yet the record 
of his interment was found and duly copied in 1814.^ 
Mystery is thus added to mystery. 

William Sidney Smith, nephew of Sir Sidney, was 
captured along with Wright and was sent to Verdun. 
His knowledge of French proved useful in 1814, when 
on board the vessel which conveyed Napoleon to 
Elba. 

Diplomatists and other public functionaries took 
the opportunity of making acquaintance with France 
or French statesmen. Francis Drake, bearing the 
name of the Elizabethan hero, but claiming descent 
from an older family, had been at the Copenhagen 
legation, and was in 1794 Minister at Genoa, whence 
he sent Grenville letters from Paris furnished to him 
by the royalist agent d'Antraigues, who was then at 
Venice, and at first in the service of Spain ; but the 
agency was transferred to ' Monsieur ' (afterwards 
Louis XVIII.), who was living at Verona.^ D'Antraigues 
employed correspondents or spies in Paris who, whether 
from credulity or knavery, sent him the most fabulous 
stories written in sympathetic ink or in cipher. The 
letters of which Drake thus received copies were pub- 
lished in the second volume of the Dropmore Papers 

1 Naval Chronicle, 1816, p. 98. 

^ Drake does not give the source of the letters, but this may be 
inferred from Pingaud, Un Agent Secret sous la Revolution. 



76 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, where they 
were heralded with a flourish, but their worthlessness 
has been exposed by M. Aulard, the most competent 
French critic. This royalist agency in Paris was dis- 
covered in 1797, and on Napoleon's advance into Italy 
Drake fled to Udine. Temporarily unemployed by the 
Foreign Office, Drake in 1802 seems to have visited 
not only France but Italy. In 1803 he was Minister 
at Munich, and was enticed by Napoleon into dealings 
with Mehee de la Touche, a spy who sold himself to 
all parties and betrayed all. Mehee was for a time a 
secretary to the Paris Commune and had a long career 
of trickery. Napoleon, always anxious to bring British 
diplomacy into ridicule, gave orders that a suitable 
man should be found to entrap Drake, and Mehee 
answered his purpose admirably. He pretended to 
give information of political feeling in France and to 
concert a royalist rising for the overthrow, if not for 
the kidnapping (a euphemism for assassination), of 
Napoleon. Drake advanced money to this pretended 
spy, who took all the letters to Paris, where they were 
forthwith published, bringing odium and derision on 
the English Foreign Office. An attempt was also made 
to capture Drake, as well as Spencer Smith, who 
was slightly implicated ; but he fled precipitately, and 
the Elector of Bavaria at the instance of Napoleon 
refused any longer to recognise him as envoy. He 
had obviously broken the eleventh commandment, 
so vital in diplomacy, 'thou shalt not be found out,' 
and neither he nor Spencer Smith was again sent 
abroad. Wickham, however, who had equally com- 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 77 

mitted himself, became in 1802 Chief Secretary for 
Ireland, and would have been sent as Envoy to Austria 
and Prussia, but that those powers, afraid of offending 
Napoleon,, declined to receive him. He consequently 
retired on a pension of £1800. English diplomacy 
was no match for Napoleon with his flagrant violation 
of traditions and courtesies. Retiring to his Somerset 
home, Drake was highly esteemed by his neighbours ; 
for his tombstone at St. Cuthbert's, Wells, speaks of 
his integrity and firmness as a magistrate and as 
recorder of that city.^ He married a daughter of Sir 
Herbert Mackworth, an ancestor of the poet Mack- 
worth Praed. 

Alexander Cockburn, consul at Hamburg, took the 
opportunity of visiting Paris with his Creole wife, 
Yolande de Vignier, and his son, the future Lord Chief- 
Justice, was born in France during this visit. Cock- 
burn was in 1825 appointed Minister to the Central 
American Republics. Sir John Craufurd, another 
nephew of Quintin Craufurd, was Minister to Lower 
Saxony from 1795 to 1803. He had visited Paris in 
1791, and he now repeated his visit. We shall see that 
he stayed longer than he liked and took French leave. 
Charles Richard Vaughan, afterwards knighted, made 
a tour in France and Germany, and then accompanied 
Sir Charles Stuart (ultimately Lord Stuart de Rothesay) 
to Spain, where he wrote an account of the siege of 
Saragossa. He rejoined Stuart as Secretary at the 
Paris Embassy at the Restoration, and was eventually 

1 I am indebted for this and other data to Miss Evelyn Drake of 
Grampound, a great-granddaughter. 



78 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Envoy to Washington. Arthur Paget, son of Lord 
Uxbridge, was one of the earhest visitors, being allowed 
a passport through France in September 1801 on 
his way to succeed Minto at Vienna. He reported 
to Lord Hawkesbury that he found the roads much 
better than he expected and the land well cultivated, 
but the towns manufacturing silk and velvet com- 
plained of bad trade, and peace with England was 
universally desired. Bonaparte, he said, was generally 
liked, for people dreaded a revolution, yet Sieyes, he 
was told at Vienna, had declared that the Consulate 
would not last through the winter.^ George Stuart, 
his chief subordinate at Vienna, also visited Paris. 
Sir Robert Liston, originally tutor to Gilbert and Hugh 
Elliot at Paris, and afterwards secretary to the latter, 
was Ambassador in America from 1796 to 1802, was 
afterwards sent to Holland and Turkey, and lived to 
the age of ninety- three. Colonel Neil was Consul at 
Lisbon. We may also mention a future diplomatist, 
Charles (afterwards Sir Charles) Oakley, son of the 
ex-Governor of Madras, who, when at the Washington 
legation, offered to marry Madame Patterson, and she 
was not then disinclined to accept a suitable successor 
to Jerome Bonaparte. Those who were or had been 
in other departments of the public service included 
Thomas Steele, Paymaster-General, John King, Under- 
Secretary at the Home Office, Henry William Bentinck, 
Governor of St. Vincent, Perkins Magra, Consul at 
Malta and naturally interested in the fate of that 
island, Donkin, secretary to George iii., and Brook, 

1 Paget Papers, 1896. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 79 

head of tlie London detective force, who was sent 
to report on the Paris system, while Napoleon sent a 
French detective to see what was done in London. 
There were also Sir Charles Warre Malet, ex-actinsr 
Governor of Bombay, and Sir Robert Chambers, late 
Chief- Justice of Calcutta, who before going out to India 
had been intimate with Dr. Johnson. This, as we shall 
see, proved to be his last journey. 

Law, physic, and divinity were not numerously repre- 
sented. Besides Erskine and other barristers sitting 
or destined to sit in the House of Commons, there was 
John Campbell, a future Lord Chief-Justice and Lord 
Chancellor, and the biographer of his class. He saw 
the 'little Corsican,' and visited Tallien. Thomas 
Wilde, afterwards Lord Chancellor Truro, was regis- 
tered, doubtless in joke by himself or his companions, 
as M.P., though he was as yet only twenty years of age. 
Curran, who had been before in 1787, dined with Fox. 
Deploring the failure of the Revolution, he disliked 
Napoleon. He little foresaw that he was about meanly 
to disown his daughter Sarah on account of her 
attachment to Emmet.^ Stewart Kyd, a friend of Home 
Tooke, prosecuted with other Radicals in 1794, had 
passed four months in the Tower, but had now sobered 
down and become a legal writer. The French police 
suspected him of being a spy. He had, in 1796, assisted 
Erskine in defending Thomas Williams, the publisher 
of Paine's Age of Reason. A native of Arbroath, he 
died in London in 1811. William Duppa is best 
known as brother of the artist and as the biographer 

^ See Gornhill Magazine, September 1903. 



80 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

of Michael Angelo. Charles Henry Okey ultimately 
settled in Paris. 

The physicians included Charles Maclean, who had 
been with Lord Elgin at Constantinople, and had also 
been in the East India Company's service, but had 
been sent home by Wellesley on account of his quarrel- 
some disposition. Landing at Hamburg in 1801, he 
proceeded through Holland to Paris, in order to advo- 
cate the establishment at Constantinople of an inter- 
national institute for the study of the plague. He was 
anxious for information on French suicides, and Holcroft 
had recommended him to apply not to a specialist but 
to Fauriel, the Sanscrit scholar. He denied the con- 
tagiousness of epidemics, and his medical crotchets, 
coupled with his controversial temper, prevented his 
being employed by the Government, wherefore he con- 
sidered himself an ill-used man. George Birkbeck, 
the future founder of mechanics' institutes, must be 
reckoned among the doctors : he accompanied Curran. 
Peter Mark Roget, a nephew of Romilly and a friend 
of Bentham, as yet Swiss rather than English, went 
as travelling tutor to the two sons of John Philips, a 
Manchester merchant, Edgeworth's son accompanying 
them. His Treasury of English Synonyms is well 
known. William Woodville, the disciple of Jenner, and 
physician to the Smallpox Hospital, had been with 
Nowel to Boulogne in the summer of 1801, at the 
solicitation of Dr. Antoine Ambert, to introduce vaccina- 
tion during a smallpox epidemic. He was an accom- 
plished botanist. Dr. Wickham, another visitor, was 
likewise a friend of Jenner. On the other hand there 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 81 

were two strong opponents of vaccination. William 
Rowley, physician to the Marylebone Infirmary and 
an accoucheur of repute, and Benjamin Moseley, of 
Chelsea Hospital, who had been trained in Paris, and 
who had a strange theory that the changes of the moon 
influenced hemorrhage of the lungs. Tuthill (after- 
wards Sir George Tuthill) took over his handsome 
wife, of whom we shall hear again. James Carrick 
Moore, brother of Sir John, became director of Jenner's 
vaccine institute. Benjamin Travers, as yet articled 
pupil to Sir Paston Cooper, was the first hospital surgeon 
to make of ophthalmia a special study. Thomas Young 
was inspector-general of hospitals. Of his distinguished 
homonym, although also a doctor, we shall speak among 
scientists. Of John Bunnell Davis and Farrell Mulvey 
we shall hear later on. James Carmichael Smyth, 
physician to George iii., was destined to be the step- 
grandfather of Thackeray, for his son Major Henry 
Carmichael Smyth married Thackeray's mother in 
India, and ' sat ' for the character of Colonel Newcome. 
The physician received £5000 from Parliament for 
curing a jail distemper at Winchester in 1796 by 
nitrous acid ; albeit a Dr. Johnston and a Frenchman 
also claimed the discovery. James Chichester Mac- 
laurin, physician to the Paris Embassy 1790-1792, re- 
turned in the same capacity in 1802. He died in 1804 at 
the age of thirty-nine. His predecessor Macdonnal also 
revisited Paris, Michael O'Ryan had practised at Lyons, 
where Louis Badger, a silk-spinner of English descent, 
one of the victims of the Revolution — mistaken for his 
brother Pierre, he refused to undeceive his executioners, 

F 



82 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

but Pierre was shot a week later — had married his wife's 
sister. Fleeing from the Revolution back to Ireland, 
O'Ryan now went and settled in Paris. He was a great 
advocate of quinine. 

Cardinal Charles Erskine, by virtue of his rank, 
claims priority among the clerical visitors. His father, 
Colin Erskine, son of Sir Charles, a Fifeshire baronet, 
was an artist at Rome, where he married a Roman lady. 
A letter to the French Government of 1808 giving an 
account of the College of Cardinals says : — 

' Erskine, 65 years of age, affects the greatest indifference 
to the present state of things (Napoleon's rule), speaking of 
the Emperor with apparent moderation, but a dangerous 
man, perhaps the most dangerous of all ; educated at the 
English college.' ^ 

He was on his way back to Rome, after having been 
a kind of legate in England, where in 1801 he had had 
the invidious task of requiring the resignations of 
the French emigre bishops on account of the Concordat. 
Fourteen, however, out of the eighteen, headed by 
Arthur Dillon, Archbishop of Narbonne, refused to 
comply, and seven colleagues on the Continent followed 
their example. A good scholar, excellent company, 
and a loyal Briton, Erskine died in 1811 in Paris, 
having been interned there by Napoleon, and was buried 
in the Pantheon.^ Dr. Gregory Stapleton, Bishop of the 
English midland district, went to St. Omer to try 
and recover the property of the English college of 

1 A. F. iv. 1503. 

^ Notes and Queries, November 30, 1901. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 83 

which he had been the head until the Revolution, but 
he died there, without having continued his journey 
to Paris, on the 5th April 1802. A fellow prelate 
was Dr. Troy, President of Maynooth, and ultimately 
Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, who was anxious to 
obtain fuller restitution of the confiscated property 
of the Irish colleges in France and to re-open them, 
for Maynooth with its two hundred seminarists was 
insufficient. He went to Lord Cornwallis, who, however, 
was unable to help him. A staunch loyalist, he had 
assisted in carrying the Union, and was consequently 
in receipt of a State pension. William Walsh until 
the Revolution had been the head of the Irish college 
in Paris. Driven away by that event, he eventually 
recovered his post. Father Peter Flood, who had 
narrowly escaped the massacre of September 1792,^ was 
sent over by the Irish Catholic bishops to effect the 
fusion of all the Franco-Irish colleges. Tuite, who till 
the Revolution had been head of the English college 
at Paris, found that building converted to secular uses. 
John Chetwode Eustace, formerly chaplain to the Jern- 
inghams, a Maynooth professor and a very liberal 
Catholic, had visited Paris in 1790, and was destined 
to pay a third visit in company with Lord Brownlow, 
Robert Rushbrooke, and Philip Roche. 

Edward Stanley, the future Bishop of Norwich, and 
father of Dean Stanley, represented the Church of 
England, for he had just been ordained. He was on 
his way to Switzerland, and was disappointed at not 
seeing Napoleon. He was over again in 1816, when 

^ See my Englishman in the French Revolution, p. 130. 



84 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

he heard drunken English soldiers singing on the 
boulevards : 

' Louis Dix-huit, Louis Dix-huit, 
We 'ye licked all your armies 
and sunk all your fleet.' 

And the French royalists imagined the song to be 
complimentary.^ 

Anglicanism was also represented by Stephen Weston, 
grandson of a bishop, who had been to Paris in 1791, 
and published rather flippant accounts of both trips. 
Then there was John Glasse, rector of Hanwell, a good 
classical scholar, whose sermon in 1793 on behalf of 
the French emigre priests made light of the differences 
between Catholicism and Protestantism. Hanwell is 
associated with lunacy, and Glasse in 1810, in a fit of 
mental derangement, hung himself at the Bull and 
Mouth Inn, London. John Sanford was a witness of 
the scene between Napoleon and Lord Whitworth on 
the 13th March 1803, and in Notes and Queries of the 
3rd April 1852, as the only surviving witness — for the 
Duchess of Gordon, her daughters, and Mrs. Greatheed 
were then dead — he gave an account of it. W. Hughes, 
landing at Dieppe in June 1802, visited Rouen, Caen, 
Blois, and other provincial towns before proceeding 
to Paris. Of John Maude, fellow of Queen's College, 
Oxford, we shall hear hereafter, as also of Churchill. 

The Church of Scotland may be credited with John 
Paterson, for he was probably the future missionary 
to Russia and Scandinavia. Alexander and Joseph 
Paterson may have been his brothers. 

1 Early Married Life of Lord Stanley of Alderley. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 85 

Nonconformity was represented by William Shepherd 
of Gatacre, Lancashire, an intimate friend of Brougham, 
author of a life of Poggio, and also of a history of the 
American Revolution. The latter work Lord John 
Russell read in manuscript before publication. Shep- 
herd had educated one of Roscoe's sons, and was now 
escorting members of the Roscoe family. He took 
with him a letter of introduction to Miss Williams, at 
whose house he met Carnot and Kosciusko, spending 
a most agreeable evening. On repeating his visit in 
1814, however, he apparently, judging by the silence 
of his Paris in 1802 and 1814, neglected to renew the 
lady's acquaintance. 

Turning to philosophers, scholars, and scientists, 
priority is due to Jeremy Bentham and Malthus. Ben- 
tham exercised the French citizenship conferred on 
him in 1792 by voting for Bonaparte's life- consulate, 
an act not very consistent with his radical doctrines.^ 
His father had taken him over to France in 1764. 
Malthus, who, though a clergyman, should be classed 
as a philosopher or economist, little imagined how 
Frenchmen, mostly without having heard of him, would 
practise his principle. He revisited the Continent in 
1825. Richard Chenevix, the mineralogist, who had 
witnessed and been imprisoned during the Revolution, 
had taken Brussels and Jena on his way to Paris. 

The Institute had in December 1801 elected as foreign 
associates Banks, Priestley, Herschel, Neville Maske- 

^ Again in 1831, at the request of Lafayette, he addressed to 'my 
fellow-citizens of all places and times' a pamphlet on a Second or 
Upper Chamber. 



86 NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITOKS 

lyne, James Rennell, the geographer, and Henry- 
Cavendish in the class of physics and mathematics ; 
Fox in that of history and classics, and Sir Benjamin 
West in that of art. There had apparently been an 
idea of also electing Arthur Young, Home Tooke, 
Sheridan, Watt, and Sir John Sinclau'. Herschel, Fox, 
and West were the only three of the eight nominees 
who acknowledged the compliment in person. Her- 
schel had the more reason for doing so as he had in 
1790 been elected an associate of the old Academy of 
Sciences before it was swept away by the Revolution. 
Sir Charles Blagden, Secretary of the Royal Society, 
whose name is attached to the law of congelation, was 
presented to Napoleon, who told him that Banks 
was much esteemed in France, and indeed Banks had 
repeatedly obtained the restitution of consignments 
to the Jardin des Plantes captured at sea by the 
English.^ Blagden seems, though a scientist, to have 
had a mission from the English Government, for 
Andreossi, the French Ambassador at London, writing 
to Regnier on the 8th April 1803, reported a statement 
of General Miranda, who was intimate with Blagden : 
' He is in the pay of the Government ; they were not 
at first satisfied with his reports, but he has changed 
his tone, and they are now better pleased.' Andreossi 
added : ' I am certain that he has spread it about 
here (in London) that I was in treaty on behalf of the 
Minister of the Interior for the purchase of a machine 

^ Bonaparte, with similar courtesy, had in 1800 sent the Royal 
Society Marchand's Voyage autour du Monde, and in 1802 he presented 
copies to George iii. and all the European sovereigns. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 87 

for " dividing " matliematical instruments, an object of 
great advantage to French industry, and requiring some 
precautions in order to be carried out.' Blagden doubt- 
less renewed bis acquaintance with Desgenettes, the 
army doctor, who since his visit as a young man to 
London in 1784 had accompanied Napoleon to Egypt, 
and was destined to accompany him to Moscow. Blag- 
den, pronounced by Dr. Johnson ' a delightful fellow,' 
was also acquainted with Count Rumford, for whose 
daughter's hand he was an unsuccessful suitor.^ After 
Waterloo he spent half the year in France and died 
there. Bonnycastle, Professor of Mathematics at Wool- 
wich Academy, described by Leigh Hunt as rather vain 
of his acquirements, but a good fellow, fond of quoting 
Shakespeare and of telling stories, was another visitor, 
probably in the company of his friend Fuseli. Dr. John 
Fleming, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Aberdeen, 
published in 1842 a History of British Animals. 
Osborn, an F.R.S., was living in 1806 at Weimar, where 
he explained to Goethe the battle of Trafalgar. Edward 
Pigott, the discoverer of the variable star in Sobieski's 
belt or sword, had observed the transit of Venus at 
Caen in 1769, and that of Mercury at Louvain in 1786. 
He dated an astronomical paper from Fontainebleau in 
1803, and in 1807 he observed the great comet, but the 
date and place of his death are uncertain.^ 

Perhaps the most eminent man of this category, 
scarcely less eminent than Herschel (though the latter 

^ Atlantic Monthly , February 1893. 

- A Mrs. Pigott, living at Geneva 1807-1815, may have been Ms 
widow. 



88 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

discovered tlie planet now named after him, but origin- 
ally styled by him the Georgium Sidus and by French- 
men, Napoleon), was Thomas Young. He was the 
author of the undulatory theory of light, ridiculed at 
the time in the Edinburgh Review by that shallow 
scientist Brougham, yet now almost universally 
accepted, and he was the first to decipher Egyptian 
hieroglyphics. His uncle, Richard Brocklesby, the 
physician and friend of Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, 
and Wilkes, bequeathed him £10,000, besides his 
house, library, and pictures. In 1801 Young, origin- 
ally tutor to Hudson Gurney — both being then 
Quakers, but both destined to renounce Quakerism — 
and a medical practitioner, had found his true voca- 
tion as Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal 
Institution and editor of the Nautical Almanac. He 
has a nephew, a rent-collector at Bristol, who, how- 
ever tells me that he was not born till after his 
illustrious uncle's death. 

It is difiicult to draw an exact line between scholars, 
connoisseurs, and savants. Charles Towneley was 
famous, like Elgin, for his marbles, the fruits of his 
Italian travels from 1765 to 1772, and purchased after 
his death in 1805 by the British Museum. TurberviUe 
Needham, the scientist, had been his tutor in Paris in 
1752, when his uncle John, translator of Hudihras into 
French verse, seems to have looked after him. Sir 
Abraham Hume, who has been already mentioned, was 
a famous collector of minerals and precious stones, 
and had purchased pictures by the old masters at 
Vienna and Bologna. He was one of the founders of the 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 89 

Geological Society, and lived to be at eighty-eight the 
senior F.R.S. Joseph Ritson, the antiquary, had been 
in Paris in 1791, when he was enthusiastic for the 
Revolution, and he actually adopted the Jacobin 
calendar. A strict vegetarian and an avowed materia- 
list, he was latterly insane. Stephen Martin-Leake, 
herald and numismatist, sent over three of his sons, 
William, Stephen, and John, the two last likewise 
heralds. William Taylor, the friend of Southey, son 
of a Norwich manufacturer, and educated by Mrs. 
Barbauld, at Palgrave, Suffolk, had been sent on the 
Continent by his father in 1779, went again in 1788, 
and now repeated his visit. He was one of the first to 
introduce German literature to English readers. He 
met Paine at a dinner given by Holcroft, and had an 
introduction to Lafayette from his uncle Dyson, a Nor- 
folk man whose son had taught Lafayette farming.^ 
Taylor went back an anti-Bonapartist. Paine had pro- 
bably opened his eyes to Napoleon's tyranny, Alexander 
Hamilton, a future F.R.S., had been in the East India 
Company's service in Bengal, and on returning to 
England, after accompanying Lord Elgin to Constanti- 
nople, had continued his Sanscrit studies. He took 
with him his Creole wife and a promising son. Few 
as were then the students of Sanscrit, fewer still were 
the students of Chinese. Thomas Manning was one 
of them. Son of the rector of Diss, Norfolk, in whose 
church Wesley preached a few weeks before his death, 
though all other church pulpits had long been closed to 
him. Manning was also at Holcroft's dinner, and we 

^ An E. Dyson died at Palgrave in 1812, aged eighty-seven. 



90 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

may imagine his being questioned about Diss by Paine, 
who had been a journeyman staymaker there. In his 
letters to his father — all beginning ' Honoured sir/ and 
subscribed 'your dutiful son' — he mentions the Abbe 
Sicard, the teacher of the deaf and dumb, Carnot, 
Madame de Stael, Chateaubriand, and Laharpe. Mann- 
ing, who suggested to Charles Lamb his roast pig essay, 
and was also intimate with Coleridge, is buried, like 
Malthus, in Bath Abbey. 

Artists flocked to Paris to see the spoils from Italy 
collected at the Louvre. There was West (not yet 
Sir Benjamin West), with his son Raphael, who was ex- 
pected to prove himself worthy of his Christian name, 
but failed to do so. It was this visit, perhaps, which 
left West no time to send a new picture to the Royal 
Academy exhibition in 1803 ; but he should not have 
attempted to palm off as new a 'Hagar and Ishmael' 
which he had exhibited in 1776. President though he 
was, the Academy insisted on its withdrawal. Opie 
was there with his wife, Amelia Alderson, who years 
afterwards gave an account of her visit in Tail's 
Magazine. Seated on the boulevards, the future 
Quakeress sang 'Fall, tyrants, fall,' a psean on the 
Revolution singularly out of place under the iron rule 
of Napoleon; but she had not yet discovered him to 
be a tyrant. Opie was so dazzled the first day by the 
white glare of Paris houses that he talked of leaving at 
once to avoid blindness, but the alarm soon passed off. 
Bertie Greatheed, the dramatist, was accompanied by 
his son, who copied assiduously at the Louvre, besides 
sketching a capital likeness of Napoleon. His copies 



NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 91 

were said to be so good tliat Napoleon refused at first 
to let them leave France, but relented on the young 
man's death.^ Erskine also induced Napoleon to sit for 
his portrait to Philips, R.A., who finished it through 
the courtesy of Josephine while her husband was at 
supper. The portrait was sold at Erskine's death and 
was apparently purchased by Lord Howden. Howden, 
who latterly lived at Bayonne, bequeathed it to the 
sub-prefecture of that town, where it still hangs, but 
not in a prominent place, so that it escaped notice 
till 1895, when, in a controversy on the colour of 
Napoleon's eyes, attention was called to it.^ Richard 
Cosway, the miniaturist, and his wife, the musician and 
historical painter, repeated their visit of 1786, when 
Richard was trying to sell to Louis xvi. some Raphael 
cartoons which he had bought of Bonfield. Andre 
Chenier, the poet destined to the guillotine, was then 
passionately in love with Mrs. Cosway. He addressed 
verses to her, some in her name in full, others in- 
scribed 'd. r.,' a contraction for d'Arno, on the banks 
of which river she was born. A Polish poet, Niem- 
cewics, likewise enamoured of her, went to see her in 
London in 1787. She now studied at the Louvre, 
next went to Lyons, and then to Lodi.^ She subse- 
quently started a school in Paris, which did not 
succeed, went again to Lyons, and eventually became 
head of a convent near that city. Daughter of an 
Enghsh hotelkeeper at Leghorn, she thus played many 

1 Monthly Review, 1826. 

^ Revue Hebdomadaire, October 19, 1895. 

3 Paris Temps, December 13 and 25, 1878. 



92 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

parts. Another female artist, Mrs. Darner, had been 
captured by a French privateer in 1779, but gallantly 
allowed to proceed to Jersey, where her father, Field- 
Marshal Conway, was governor. Josephine, whom she 
had known before her marriage, introduced her to 
Napoleon, who, as previously stated, bespoke a bust 
of Fox. Strawberry House had been bequeathed to 
her by Horace Walpole. John Claude Nattes, one 
of the earliest of water-colourists and a topographi- 
cal draftsman, took views of Paris, Versailles, and 
St. Denis. For unaccountably exhibiting drawings not 
his own, he was in 1807 expelled from the Water 
Colour Society, but he then resumed sending to the 
Royal Academy. Masquerier, of whom we have already 
heard, was again in Paris. Let it suffice to name Sir 
Martin Shee, President of the Royal Academy ; Fuseli ; 
Flaxman, who with his wife accompanied West ; Duppa, 
who had witnessed French spoliation at Rome in 1798 ; 
Farrington, who accompanied Rogers; Bowyer, the 
fashionable portrait painter and illustrator of Hume's 
History ; Edward Hayes, the miniaturist, and his father, 
the more distinguished painter, Michael Angelo Hayes ; 
George Bryant, engaged by the sportsman Thornton; 
William Dickinson, with his son, of whom we shall 
hear later on; Boddington; Hoppner, the naturalised 
German ; ^ Thomas Daniell ; William Turner ; Andrew 
Wilson ; John Wright ; Robert Flin ; William Sher- 
lock, who forty years before had studied in Paris, the 

^ His 'Countess of Dysart' was sold in June 1901 for 14,050 
guineas, the highest price ever given at an auction in England for a 
picture. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 93 

illustrator of Smollett's History; B. D. Wyatt, the 
architect ; Abraham Raimbach, the engraver ; Charles 
and James Heath and Jervis, also engravers; and 
Thomas Richard Underwood. Likewise an artist 
in her way was Mary Linwood, who in 1798 had 
opened an exhibition of art needlework, viz. copies 
of a hundred pictures of old masters and modern 
painters, and who went on working till the age of 
seventy-five, when eyesight failed her. Her Napo- 
leon in woolwork is now in the South Kensington 
Museum. 

But few actors had time — they can scarcely have 
lacked inclination — to visit Paris. John Philip Kemble, 
however, described in the register as rentier, went to 
see his old college at Douai, which he found so dilapi- 
dated that he had not the heart to inspect his old room. 
Arriving in Paris in July 1802, he made the acquaint- 
ance of Talma, who showed him, with his companions 
Lords Hollands and Cloncurry, over the Louvre. He 
then proceeded to Madrid to study Spanish acting. 
His brother Charles likewise went to Paris on his 
way to Vienna and St, Petersburg, not reappearing in 
London till September 1803. Their father Roger, a 
less accomplished actor, who never played but once in 
London, and then for the benefit of his son Stephen, is 
said to have spent from May 1799 to October 1802 in 
Italy and France ; but this seems unlikely at his age, 
for at his death in December 1802 he was over eighty. 
Edmond John Eyre, the son of a clergyman, had left 
Cambridge without a degree in order to take to the 
stage. He was, however, an indifferent actor at Bath 



94 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

and Bristol. He publislied his Observations nnade at 
Paris. 

We may couple with the Kembles and Eyre Mrs. 
Charlotte Atkyns, though she had long left Drury 
Lane where she was known as 'the pretty Miss Walpole.' 
She married in 1779, at the age of twenty-five, Edward 
Atkyns of Ketteringham Hall, Norfolk, who died in 1794. 
She was in Paris during the Revolution, and was one of 
those who endeavoured to effect the escape of Marie 
Antoinette. In 1809 she celebrated George iii.'s 
Jubilee by a feast to the villagers of Ketteringham, 
at which she herself proposed the loyal toasts. The 
death of her only son in 1804 had then left her sole 
mistress of Ketteringham, but she seems ultimately 
to have lost her property. She was an ardent believer 
in the sham Dauphin Bruneau, but was nevertheless 
pensioned after 1815 by Louis xviii. and died in Paris 
about 1829. 

Let us turn to inventors. Congreve has been already 
named. James Watt had not seen France since 1786, 
when his advice was called for on the Marly aqueduct. 
This time he does not appear to have had any profes- 
sional purpose, albeit that aqueduct was again out of 
repair, Thomas Wedgwood, one of the three sons of the 
great potter, was the future inventor of photography. 
An invahd in search of health, he required change of 
scene. He deserves mention for settling an annuity 
on Coleridge, and as the friend of Sydney Smith. He 
first went to Brussels, joined Poole in Paris, went on 
with him to Switzerland, and returned home in August 
1803. Greathead, another inventor, doubtless wished 



NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 95 

to introduce his lifeboat. Robert Salmon, steward to 
the Duke of Norfolk and clerk of the works at the re- 
building of Carlton House, had invented a chaff-cutting 
machine, and probably wished to make it known in 
France, while William Story took out a patent for a 
blue dye. 

There were also men of business and men who went 
over on business. Sir Elijah Impey, who has been 
named among the ex-M.P's, had been chosen as delegate 
by a meeting in London of claimants for compensation 
for confiscated property, an article in the treaty having 
stipulated that such claims should be promptly settled 
by the tribunals. The article was nominally applicable 
to both countries, but England, of course, had had no 
revolution and had confiscated little, if any, French pro- 
perty. No such claims were settled before the renewal 
of hostilities, for Whitworth, reporting a conversation 
with Napoleon on the 23rd February 1803, says : — 

' I alleged as a cause of mistrust and jealousy the impossi- 
bility of obtaining justice or any kind of redress for any of 
His Majesty's subjects. He asked me in what respect. 
I told him that since the signing of the treaty not one 
British claimant had been satisfied, though every Frenchman 
of that description had been so within one month after that 
period.' 

The claims, as we shall see, were revived in 1815, 
when France gave a lump sum of sixty millions, leaving 
the English authorities to adjudicate on the separate 
claims. The claims certainly presented difficulties, for 
Merry, on the 12th May 1802, speaks of 'clamorous 
demands,' and on the 23rd June of ' incessant and some- 



96 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

times intemperate applications ' ; while on taking his 
departure in December he expressed mortification at 
having the claims unredressed.^ Even private papers 
were not restored, perhaps because being mostly trades- 
men's bills they were not thought worth reclaiming, 
but possibly because troublesome formalities were neces- 
sary. Merry had been directed to back the claim of 
the Duke of Richmond to the Aubigny estates con- 
ferred by Louis xiv. on his ancestress, Charles ii.'s 
mistress, but in January 1803 Napoleon decreed that 
no British subject could possess landed property in 
France, and in 1807 Aubigny was definitely confiscated. 
Among the business men, bankers may be allowed 
precedence. I do not reckon Rogers among them, for 
his visit had no more to do with banking than that of 
his brother-in-law Sutton Sharpe with brewing. But 
there were Boyd and Benfield, of whom I have already 
spoken. I have also mentioned Sir Francis Baring 
and his son Alexander. Hugh Hamersley, son of an 
Oxfordshire clergyman, and named Hugh on account 
of descent from Sir Hugh Hamersley, Lord Mayor of 
London in 1627, was one of the earliest lovers of 
Theroigne de Mericourt. According to her confessions 
or interrogatories when a prisoner in Austria, he pro- 
mised her marriage, and she remained with him till 
1785 ; but on coming into possession of his patrimony 
he took her to Paris, there indulged in dissipation, and 
returned without her, but settled 200,000 f. on her. 
Such a statement of course requires verification, but 
the tradition at her birthplace is that she eloped with 
1 Despatches, Record Office. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 97 

an Englishman in the hope of becoming a public singer 
in London, for she had a fine voice. (Eisner states, 
however, that after bearing a son to Persan de Doublet, 
who dismissed her with an annuity of 12,000 f., she 
went to London and lived with the ItaHan singer 
Carducci, a eunuch whom she induced to take with him 
to Italy, but they quarrelled and parted at Genoa.^ 
(Eisner is likely to have ascertained the true version of 
her antecedents. Did Hamersley inquire for the poor 
lunatic in 1802 ?2 He had been agent for the French 
Government in the maintenance of French prisoners 
in England until it changed its system and left England 
to support them. Madame Dubarry, on recovering her 
stolen jewels in London, deposited them with Hamers- 
ley. He subscribed £315 to the patriotic fund of 1803, 
and in 1812 was M.P. for Helston, On his death in 
1840 his bank was wound up and yielded only 10s. in 
the pound. He had married in 1810 Margaret, daughter 
of John Bevan, a Quaker banker, and I remember his 
nephew or cousin as Chairman of Oxfordshire Quarter 
Sessions. Herries, brother of Sir Charles Herries, pro- 
bably went to fetch his wife, who had been an eye- 
witness of the Revolution. Thornton and Power, 
English bankers at Hamburg and other Continental 
towns, opened a branch at Paris in 1802, and in 1805 
John Power applied for French citizenship; but the 
police reported unfavourably on the application, alleg- 
ing that the Hamburg bank acted for the Enghsh 

1 Revue Historiqm (Paris), Jan. 1903. 

2 The visitor of 1802 may, however, have been not Th^roigne's lover, 
but her lover's son. 

G 



98 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Government and that the Paris branch had furnished 
money to the conspirator Georges, though pleading 
ignorance of his criminal purpose. Thornton, they 
added, was an illegitimate son of the well-known M.P. 
and writer on finance. ^ Thornton and Power seem to 
have amalgamated with Perregaux, who had dealings 
with London banks. Kensington was another London 
banker. William Dawes, assistant secretary to the 
Bank of England, was probably commissioned to report 
on the newly established Bank of France, and MoUien 
relates how Napoleon, on being shown an intercepted 
letter from a Paris to an English banker advising him 
to subscribe for its shares, exclaimed, 'Such are 
merchants ! Disputes between governments do not 
disturb their alliances.' 

Speaking of merchants, William Ewart was the 
eminent Liverpool merchant after whom Gladstone 
was named on account of his father's intimacy 
with him, while Judah, Henry, and Abraham Salo- 
mons were doubtless the uncles of Sir David Salomons, 
the first Jew returned to Parliament. There were 
also Joseph,^ Leon, and Moses Montefiore, of Bologna 
origin, the first of them already the father of Sir 
Moses Montefiore the philanthropist, then a youth of 
eighteen. This Moses Montefiore was on his way to 
Leghorn. James and Thomas Payne, eminent booksellers 
of the second generation, were doubtless bent on picking 



1 A. F. iv. 1494. 

^ Joseph Montefiore, arrested in 1803 on returning from a visit to 
London, is described as having been born there and as residing at 
Marseilles. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 99 

up rare volumes. James, succeeding to tlie business of 
Elmsley, had already profited by the dispersion of such 
treasures in the Revolution — the Lamoignon collection 
for instance. He had secured many prizes for Lord 
Spencer to enrich the famous Althorp collection, 
which in 1899 was purchased by Mrs. Rylands and 
presented to Manchester. He also had dealings with 
the British Museum and the Bodleian; and had 
supplied some rare English books to the Paris National 
Library, and helped in its catalogue. 

William Hayes was another bookselling tourist, and 
there was John Nichols, the printer and publisher, the 
biographer of Hogarth and for nearly half a century 
editor of the Gentleman's Magazine. He had just 
retired from business, and with his two daughters went 
to the south of France. Then there was Thomas Poole, 
the friend of Paine, the friend also of Coleridge and 
Sir Humphry Davy. He went to hear the Abb6 Sicard 
lecture to the deaf and dumb. 

From books to horses is a long jump. Edward 
Tattersall had been sent over in 1775 on an invitation 
from M. de Mezieres, equerry to Louis xvi., and had 
much enjoyed himself. His father Richard, who 
supplied horses for the French royal stud, told the 
French host not to spoil the boy, but to make him keep 
his place, as he would have to earn his own livelihood.^ 
The mention of Tattersall naturally suggests Philip 
Astley, who hoped to recover ten years' rent for his old 
circus, which had been converted into barracks ; but 

^ Many of Richard's letters to Mezieres, in indifferent spelling, are 
in the French Archives, T. 132. 



• LofC. 



100 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

while engaged in securing this, his London circus, in 
which he had introduced French performances, was 
burnt down. William Boffin Kennedy was a well- 
known florist who had Josephine as a customer, for 
in 1801, in a letter to Otto at London, she sent a list 
of flowers to be ordered of him. Lastly there was 
Dorant, proprietor of the York Hotel, Albemarle Street, 
London, who went over to cash £2000 in assignats, 
but found them worth just 12 f. He acted as cicerone, 
familiar as he was with Paris, to young George Jackson 
of the Embassy. 

We now come to authors, whom we have reserved till 
nearly the last, not because they were the least impor- 
tant, rather the reverse, but because they are the most 
numerous. They may be conveniently divided into 
writers on Paris — chiels taking notes — and writers on 
other subjects. As to the former, it must be confessed 
that few of these accounts of Paris possess much merit 
or interest. There are, however, some notable excep- 
tions. Thomas Holcroft, as 'dogmatic, virulent, and 
splenetic as ever ' says King, had been prosecuted in 
1794; but on the acquittal of Home Tooke and others 
the case against him was abandoned. He had been to 
Paris in 1783, and again in 1785 to fetch his son back 
from school, when along with Bonneville, Paine's future 
host, he wrote down Beaumarchais's Figaro from 
hearing it at the theatre, being unable otherwise to 
procure a copy in order to have it performed in London. 
He had paid a third visit in 1799-1801, and he was 
now accompanied by his second wife Louise Mercier, 
who was born in France but brought up in Eng- 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 101 

land.i He also took his daughter Fanny, the future 
novelist and translator, who married first Dr. Badams 
and secondly Danton's nephew Merget. Holcroft in his 
Travels from Hamburg to Paris (1804) gives a good 
picture of Parisian society. J. G. Lemaistre, who went 
to claim a legacy, was one of the earliest visitors, for he 
started in October or November 1801, remaining till May 
1802. In the latter year he pubhshed a Rough Sketch of 
Paris. He went on to Switzerland, Italy, and German}^ 
and in his Travels after the Peace of Amiens (1806) he 
gave a curious account of his dining with Cardinal York, 
then already getting into his dotage. Lemaistre was the 
son of an Indian judge, was described by Erskine as ' a 
most agreeable, good-natured, sensible man,' and was 
obviously of French or Channel Isle descent. Sir John 
Carr, a Rugby scholar, wrote numerous books of travel, 
his Stranger in France (1803) being his first attempt. 
In 1898 it was translated into French by M. Albert 
Babeau. No other visitor of 1802 has had a similar 
honour, but Paris as it was and as it is by Francis 
William Blagdon, a teacher of languages, was translated 
at the time into German. 

John King, the author of Letters from France, re- 
printed I think from the True Briton, had a singular 
career. He was the son of poor Jewish parents, was 
apparently named (not of course christened) Isaac, and 
was brought up at a Jewish charity school. Thomas 
Paine, with whom he was afterwards to break lances, 

^ She was the daughter of Sebastian Mercier, and after Holcroft's 
death married James Kenney, the dramatist. She died in 1853. 
Her brother accompanied Holcroft back to England, but the printing- 
office started by them did not succeed. 



102 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

knew him young, penniless, and friendless, a flaming 
Radical. Clerk in a Jewish counting-house, he made 
use of his good abilities and started as a money-lender 
and bill-discounter, advancing money on post-obits to 
spendthrift heirs. He was also a frequent speaker at a 
debating club in Carlisle Street. In 1783 he published, 
dedicating it to Fox, Thoughts on the DifficvMies and 
Distresses in which the Peace o/ 1783 has involved the 
People of England. He lived in style, and is de- 
scribed as a banker at Egham, but seems to have been 
simply a broker. As such, nicknamed ' Jew King ' or 
* King of the Jews,' he became notorious for litigation, 
figuring frequently in the courts as plaintiff, defendant, 
or witness, and he was roughly handled by cross- 
examining counsel. He was, moreover, twice im- 
prisoned for debt. He had previously visited France, 
and in December 1792 he had denounced the Revolu- 
tion. Twitted by Paine with his change of opinions, he 
replied that the Revolution, not he himself, had 
changed. At Paris he was accompanied or joined by 
his wife the Dowager-Countess of Lanesborough, a 
widow since 1779, and is said to have procured her son 
a rich wife.^ In any case he himself had obtained a 
potentially rich wife, for the Countess in 1814 came 
into possession for life of the estates of her brother, the 
Earl of Belvedere. A police note by Desmarest of the 
2nd October 1802 gives no flattering account of King: — 

' This Englishman, a branded swindler, has just in- 
curred another disgrace. His daughter, daughter of Lady 

^ The son, who married Elizabeth Latouche, died in 1806, leaving a 
son who became a lunatic in 1826 and died unmarried in 1847. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 103 

Lanesborough his wife, last night quitted King's house to 
rejoin her husband M, de Marescote (Marquis Luigi Mares- 
cotti) of Bologna. King for nine years had detained this 
young woman from her husband, and had always refused 
to give her up. He required Marescote to fetch her in 
England, because he would then have presented heavy bills, 
which he would have forced him to pay even by litiga- 
tion. Madame M. took advantage of her stay in Paris to 
rejoin her husband. All this happened under the eyes and 
with the approval of the Italian Minister, Marescalchi, who 
beforehand informed the Minister of Justice. Mr. King has 
confined himself to preferring a charge of robbery against 
Miss Oliver, Madame M.'s lady's-maid. King pretends to 
have had promises from two ministers for starting a rival 
English paper in Paris. He wrote some days ago to 
General Moreau, Santerre, Tallien, and a fourth person to 
invite them to dine with him, which they refused. It is 
presumed that his object was simply to obtain answers from 
them which he hoped to produce in London and thus make 
fresh dupes. He is always careful to write his letters in his 
own name and that of Lady Lanesborough, the latter name 
procuring him deference and answers. Senator Perregaux 
(a banker) who has been consulted respecting this foreigner, 
regards him as a swindler and as a dangerous man.' 

This report must be a mixture of fact and fiction, for 
even if King, on Lady Lanesborough's departure from 
Paris in October 1802, was left in charge of her 
daughter, he could not have been sequestrating her for 
nine years. Marescotti, moreover, when arrested at 
Cassel in 1807 and incarcerated at Bouillon, is described 
in another police report as a needy adventurer employed 
by the English Government. A German translation of 
Goldsmith's book on Napoleon was in his possession, 



104 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

and he was charged with circulating pamphlets of the 
same kind. He was released in the following year, on 
the understanding that his brother at Bologna would 
keep him out of mischief.^ No mention is made of his 
wife, who had probably quitted him. Thomas Moore 
met her at Bologna in 1819 (her mother also he 
saw in Paris in 1821), and she lived till 1840. King's 
banking partner Lathrop Murray, who pretended to be 
a baronet, became bankrupt in the summer of 1802, 
pleading in excuse that he had fallen a prey in Paris to 
King's wiles, backed by French wines and by Lady 
Lanesborough's attractions. Returning to England, 
King was arrested for debt in 1802, but published 
his book in 1803, and in the following year he issued a 
pamphlet entitled Oppressions deemed no Injustice 
toward Some Individuals. This was a protest against 
his rough handling in the Law Courts. He also 
published a Universal System of Arithmetic, but after 
his wife's accession to her brother's property, he lived 
abroad with her in good style. He died at Florence in 
1823, and his wife, aged eighty-seven, in 1828.^ His 
Letters from France are not without interest. He 
mentions that Santerre, when lunching with him, justi- 
fied his beating the drums at Louis xvi.'s execution, 
his object being to prevent royalist cries which would 
have led to bloodshed. 

King naturally brings us to his fellow Hebrew, 
Lewis Goldsmith. Born at Richmond, Surrey, about 
1773, he seems to have been in 1792 at Frankfort and 

1 F. 7, 3755 and 3759. 

2 Monthly Review, Nov. 1823, and Gentleman's Magazine, Feb. 1824. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 105 

in 1794 in Poland, whence he wrote to Lord Stanhope, 
urging him to bring the Polish cause before Parliament. 
Stanhope, however, though sympathising with Kos- 
ciusko, stated that the Anglo-Prussian alUance debarred 
him from doing so. In 1795 Goldsmith, as a friend of 
Joel Barlow, wrote a preface to the second part of 
Barlow's Advice to the Privileged Orders, an exhorta- 
tion to kings and aristocrats to renounce their doomed 
prerogatives. According to Lord Campbell, Goldsmith 
had been an emissary of all the great European powers, 
yet in 1801 he published a pamphlet entitled The 
Crimes of Cabinets, in which he denounced the British 
and Continental Governments as bent on dismembering 
France. It was to escape prosecution for this tirade 
that he went to Paris, his wife Rebecca with their 
daughter joining him. He alleges, but it is difficult 
to beheve him, that he was taken to Dieppe in order 
to be given up to England as a conspirator in exchange 
for Peltier, and that no such exchange being feasible 
he was sent back to Paris. There, it is clear, he offered 
his services to Napoleon, who conceived the idea of 
starting an Enghsh newspaper in Paris to circulate 
his ideas in England and its colonies. Curiously 
enough Napoleon was an unconscious plagiary of the 
Commonwealth, which in 1650 founded or supported 
a French weekly newspaper, Nouvelles Ordinaires de 
Londres, for circulation on the Continent. ^ That 

^ It was published by William Dugard, a Worcestershire man, but 
to judge by his name, of French extraction. He was master of 
Merchant Taylors' School, London, printer to the Council of State, 
and a friend of Milton. See Dictionary of National Biography, which 
does not, however, mention his newspaper. 



106 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

newspaper lasted only eight years, and the Paris Argus 
lasted about as long. There must have been a staff 
of English compositors to bring it out. It gave copious 
extracts from the London journals, but was violently 
anti-English or at least anti-ministerial in its tone. 
Goldsmith afterwards disclaimed responsibility for its 
diatribes, insisting that he simply inserted the articles 
sent him. In November 1802 Napoleon ordered five 
hundred copies to be regularly sent to the French West 
Indies in order thence to reach the neighbouring British 
colonies. The paper was described by Merry as a 
' despicable publication.' But in February 1803 Gold- 
smith was dismissed, which Whit worth notified as a sign 
of peace, the paper having changed its tone. His suc- 
cessor was Thomas Dutton, ex-editor of the Dramatic 
Censor, who soon incurred disgrace and imprisonment. 
Goldsmith, pleading penury, asked for 7000 f. compen- 
sation. He had, he said, been promised the proprietor- 
ship, and had been put to great expense by his wife 
bringing over her furniture from England. He had also 
paid in advance for his daughter's schooling,^ and being 
threatened with assassination by the English in Paris he 
was anxious to leave.^ He remained, however, for in 
1804-1805 he published with Barere the Memorial Anti- 
Britannique. He also translated Blackstone into 
French, and he advertised in the Petites Ajffiches in 
1805-1806 as a pupil of Scott and Schabracq, London 
notaries, and as a sworn interpreter ready to undertake 
translations and other business. 

^ This daughter apparently died in childhood. 
- Souvenirs et Mdmoires, Oct. 1899. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 107 

Returning in 1809 to England with a passport from 
Dunkirk for America, he was imprisoned for a short 
time in Tuthill Fields, but on his release began to 
write violently against Napoleon, Goldsmith published 
in 1811 the Secret History of the Cabinet of Bonaparte, 
and he proposed in 1815 that a price should be set 
on Bonaparte's head. In spite of these provocative, 
not to say scurrilous, publications, he after Waterloo 
settled down quietly in Paris till his death in 1846 as 
solicitor to the British Embassy. One of his duties 
was to hand over the letters or parcels which in those 
days of dear postage and carriage were franked by 
the Foreign Office, and a friend of mine, sent as a young 
man to Paris to get a French polish, remembers how 
Goldsmith used to quiz or banter him on the supposed 
feminine source of such consignments. But the most 
romantic event in Goldsmith's career, a kind of par- 
allel to King's marriage, was the marriage in 1837 of 
his handsome daughter Georgiana, born in Paris in 
1807, to Lord Lyndhurst, ex-Lord Chancellor. ' I lived 
in Paris,' she told Augustus Hare in 1881, ' with my 
father, and I was nobody. I never expected to marry. 
Why should I ? I had no fortune and no attractions.' 
Lyndhurst first saw her when visiting Paris with his 
first wife. He went over again, a widower, in 1837 and 
made her an offer. Hare speaks of her ' clever vivacity 
acquired by her early life in France.' 'I had,' she 
told him, ' twenty-six years of the most perfect happi- 
ness ever allotted to woman.' Both husband and wife 
were curious links with the past, for the former, son 
of the artist Copley, was born at Boston, U.S., in 1772, 



108 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

four years before the Declaration of Independence, 
while the widow survived till 1891. 

Another man who boxed the political compass was 
James Redhead Yorke. Visiting Paris in 1792, full 
of enthusiasm for the Revolution,^ and imprisoned 
for sedition at Dorchester, he not only fell in love 
with his jailer's daughter, whom he married on his 
release, but turned anti-Gallican. He nevertheless 
in 1802 renewed acquaintance with Paine, who said 
to him, ' Do you call this a republic ? Why, they are 
worse off than the slaves in Constantinople.' Yet 
Paine had originally, like many intelligent Frenchmen, 
admired Napoleon. Yorke's Letters from France were 
reprinted, like King's, from a newspaper. 

A fourth erratic journalist was William Playfair, 
brother of the Edinburgh geologist. He had helped 
to capture the Bastille, but was so disillusioned with 
the Revolution that on returning to London in 1792 
he advocated flooding France with forged assignats 
as the surest means of overturning the Republic. For 
this Louis Blanc has pilloried him, but reprehensible 
as the scheme was, Playfair — what an irony in his 
name ! — was not even entitled to originality, for forged 
Congressional notes had been circulated during the 
American War of Independence. Although the English 
Government did not act on Playfair's suggestion the 
royalist emigres did so, and Napoleon, as we shall 
see, followed the evil example by counterfeiting 
English, Austrian, and Russian notes. Playfair on 
this second visit to Paris had no literary purpose, but 

1 See my Paris in 1789-1794. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 109 

in 1820 he published a criticism on Lady Morgan's book 
on France. His editorship of Oalignani's Messenger, 
his inventions, never lucrative, and his pecuniary 
troubles need not be detailed. Like King and Gold- 
smith he must be pronounced an adventurer and a 
weathercock. 

Another journahst, James Parry, had just disposed 
of the Courier, and settled in France. If, as Lord 
Malmesbury and Goldsmith allege, he had been in 
the pay of the Directory he deserved, if contempt, 
forbearance, yet as we shall find he did not obtain 
any. 

Colonel Thomas Thornton had visited France before 
the Revolution, and had shown hospitality in England 
to emigres. He was the only visitor whose object was 
sport, and he took fourteen hounds with him, albeit 
game was scarce, as for twelve years the peasants had 
had it all their own way. Wolves, however, still 
existed. He published in 1806 A Sporting Tour 
through France, and going again after Waterloo he 
purchased Pont-sur-Seine. The mansion, indeed, had 
been destroyed by the Cossacks, but the outbuildings 
were capable of habitation. He sold the property, 
however, in 1821 to Casimir Perier, the grandfather 
of the future President of the Republic, and died 
in Paris seven years later, leaving a will in favour of 
an illegitimate daughter which was annulled by the 
English tribunals. 

We now come to two lady writers. One was Frances 
Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Francis Bernard, Governor 
of Massachusetts, and wife of the Rev. Richard King, 



110 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

a Cambridgeshire clergyman. She was intimate with 
Hannah More, and founded district visiting societies 
and schools. She published a Tour in France in 
which she mentions that Boulogne was full of English 
who had remained there during the Revolution, and 
that you could scarcely enter a shop there without 
being addressed in English. She spent seven months 
in Paris. The other was Anne Plumptree, novelist and 
translator, daughter of a Huntingdonshire clergyman, 
and granddaughter of a Cambridge don. She accom- 
panied the Opies. Though a democrat, she admired 
Napoleon and actually wished him to invade England. 
Her Narrative of a Three Years' Residence in France 
(1810) relates chiefly to provincial life, which is an 
agreeable change after so many books on Paris. I 
have already mentioned Francis William Blagdon, a 
prolific author, who, having previously visited France 
in 1784, published Paris as it was and as it is. 
I may also mention William Thomas Williams, author 
in 1807 of The State of France ; David Morrice, a 
schoolmaster, with his View of Modern France and 
Practical Guide from London to Paris; Stewarton 
who wrote anonymously or otherwise against Napoleon 
and Talleyrand ; and Israel Worsley, with his State of 
France (1806). Worsley went back to Dunkirk after 
Waterloo to re-open a school. In 1828 he undertook 
to prove the descent of the American Indians from 
the lost tribes. George Tappen, who was interested 
in painting and architecture, published a Tour through 
France and Italy. 

John Dean Paul, a banker and future baronet, went 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 111 

over in August 1802 as one of a party of five, accom- 
panied by two servants and a courier. He tells us 
in his anonymous book, Journal of a Party of Plea- 
sure to Paris, that a young friend of his in the uniform 
of the Wiltshire Militia was tapped on the shoulder 
in the Louvre and asked to what regiment he belonged. 
The inquirer was Bonaparte, who frequently thus 
accosted British officers. Paul's son and heir, then 
an infant, became unpleasantly notorious fifty years 
later. His daughter married in 1827 Edward Fox 
Fitzgerald, son of Lord Edward. She lived till 1891. 
William Beckford, the author of Vathek, had paid 
several visits to Paris. In October 1782 he passed 
through it on his way home from Naples. 'A little 
impertinent, purse-proud puppy,' Samuel Meek styled 
him in his diary, for though staying at the same hotel 
he had refused to answer an inquiry respecting a 
nephew of Meek at Naples. He was again in Paris 
from April 1791 to June 1792, when he ordered a 
tapestry for his London house, and went on to 
Lausanne, where he purchased Gibbon's library. He 
paid a third visit in February 1793, and left in May 
with a passport from the municipality vised by Lebrun, 
the Foreign Minister; but the Calais authorities de- 
tained him until the Convention had been consulted. 
He left behind him his two riding-horses, which were 
seized for military baggage trains. The General Safety 
Committee, declaring them unfit for such work, ordered 
them to be restored,^ on the ground that Beckford had 
offered to present two cart-horses which would be 

1 A. F. ii. 288. 



112 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

much, more serviceable, and that from love of liberty 
he had lived much in France. We hear no particulars 
of his visit of May 1802. 

As for authors on non-French subjects, their name 
is legion. Let us begin with poets. Wordsworth, it 
is true, did not go further than Calais, but I have 
already named Rogers, who had also seen Paris during 
the Revolution, and now paid it a second visit. He 
described Napoleon as having a very strong profile, 
a sallow but not disagreeable complexion, light grey 
eyes, and scarcely perceptible eyebrows. Fox com- 
missioned Rogers to buy andirons for him in the Palais 
Royal Arcades. Then there was Walter Savage Landor, 
who started with admiration for Napoleon, but found 
' not an atom of liberty left.' He witnessed the festival 
in the Tuileries gardens in honour of the life-consulate, 
and he wrote to his brother : ' I expected that the sky 
would have been rent with acclamations. On the con- 
trary, he (Bonaparte) experienced such a reception as 
was given to Richard ill. He was sensibly mortified. 
All bowed, but he waved to and fro, and often wiped 
his face with his handkerchief. He retired in about 
ten minutes.' On returning home and reprinting his 
Oebir, Landor appended a qualifying note to his line : 

' A mortal man above all mortal praise.' 

He called on Paine, and in his Imaginary Conversa- 
tions (fifth series, xi.) introduced a minute description 
of him. He represents him as uncombed, unshaven, 
and unwashed, and as solacing his misfortunes by 
brandy, yet he makes him foresee Napoleon's inor- 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 113 

dinate ambition and fall. Landor revisited Paris in 
1814 and 1840. Paine, by tbe way, was escorted to 
Havre at the end of August 1802 on his way to 
America by Thomas, or 'Clio,' Rickman, a versifier if 
not exactly a poet, who named his six sons Paine, 
Washington, Franklin, Rousseau, Petrarch, and Yolney. 
They were surely to be pitied. Another versifier was 
William Parsons, who in 1785 had published a maga- 
zine at Florence and had associated there with Madame 
Piozzi, Robert Merry, and Bertie Greatheed. Great- 
heed, as we have seen, was also now in Paris. 

Amongst other writers of works of imagination were 
Thomas Hope, the author of Anastasia, art connois- 
seur, and father of Beresford Hope ; ^ William Combe, 
who had married Mrs. Cosway's sister, author of Dr. 
Syntax, a book widely read in its day ; and Edgeworth, 
who was arrested and but for Whitworth's remon- 
strance would have been expelled. He fancied that 
he had been taken for a brother of the Abbe Edge- 
worth, Louis xvi.'s confessor, a distant kinsman whom 
he had never even seen ; but the police register ^ states 
that he had indulged in 'indiscreet talk.' His eldest 
son Lovell, as we shall find, did not come off so lightly. 
Edgeworth was accompanied by his fourth wife, his 
distinguished daughter Maria, and her younger half- 
sister Charlotte. He had intended to stay two years, 
but happily left in time. Maria revisited Paris in 
1820. 

^ His age is registered as thirty, which, if correct, settles the date 
of his birth. 
2 F. 7, 2232. 

H 



114 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

More matter-of-fact writers included Anthony Aufrere, 
an art connoisseur, a contributor to the Gentleman's 
Magazine, a translator from the German and Italian, 
and editor of Lockhart's Letters. Hazlitt, the critic 
and essayist, who was introduced to Prosper Merimee's 
father, the artist, copied at the Louvre, and paid a 
second visit in 1824. Filon fancifully suggests that 
the unborn Prosper was influenced by his mother's 
impression of Hazlitt. There was also John Allen, the 
Edinburgh Reviewer, a 'man of vast information and 
great conversational powers,' says Macaulay, but who, 
living with Lord Holland from 1801 till his death in 
1843, wrote little. John Gifford, the Tory pamphleteer, 
editor of the Anti-Jacobin Review, a continuation of 
the famous Anti- Jacobin, had been the author, con- 
cocter, or arranger of Letters from France in 1792. 
His visits to France did not lessen his insular pre- 
judices. In contrast to him there was David Williams, 
Nonconformist minister and schoolmaster, but now 
best known as founder and secretary of the Royal 
Literary Fund. He had been in Paris in the winter of 
1792, but seemingly did not attend the British dinner 
at which an address to the Convention was adopted. 
Madame Roland regretted that he had not been elected 
a member of that body in lieu of Paine, but he had 
reason to congratulate himself on this. Lebrun, Minister 
of Foreign Affairs, entrusted him with a letter to 
Grenville regretting the imminence of hostilities and 
suggesting that, as in the previous war, a few packets 
might continue to ply between Dover and Calais;^ 

^ Revolution Fran^aise, February 1890. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 115 

but the letter received no answer. James Anderson, 
whose extensive view ranged from chimneys to cattle- 
breeding and political economy, had corresponded with 
Washington on 'moral philosophy and agricultural 
topics.' Last, but far from least, was Henry Hallam, 
as yet a young man of twenty-five. 

We now come to four men who made France their 
home. Quintin Craufurd, a nabob from Manila, acting 
on his maxim, ' Make your fortune where you like, 
but enjoy it at Paris,' settled there in 1780. He pro- 
vided the carriage in which the royal family in 1791 
attempted to escape. He himself had gone to Brussels, 
perhaps expecting to meet them, and not venturing 
to return, his furniture was confiscated. He was now 
able to resume life in Paris, and frequently played 
whist with Talleyrand, for cards were his passion. 
Herbert Croft, nominally a clergyman as well as a 
baronet, though he had little of the reverend about 
him, and was dependent on a Government pension 
of £200, had been the friend of Johnson, whom he 
furnished with a life of Chatterton. He, like Boswell, 
was duped by the Ireland forgeries. Just too late 
to succour Chatterton, he was also just too late to 
succour a French poet, Grainville, a cousin of Bernardin 
de St. Pierre; but he happily did not foresee a more 
direct connection with a third suicide, that of his 
brother and successor in the title. Princess Charlotte's 
surgeon. He wrote in the Argus in 1805 in favour 
of peace. Becoming the companion of Lady Mary 
Hamilton, daughter of Lord Leven, another state 
pensioner (but only to the amount of £80), Croft in 



116 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

1809 engaged Charles Nodier as his secretary, and 
Nodier for two years turned into French his and the 
lady's productions. Both these amateur authors died 
in 1816. 

The third Anglo-Frenchman was John Fraser Frisell, a 
Glasgow student who in 1792, at the age of sixteen, went 
to France to complete his education. Enthusiastic for 
the Revolution, he was imprisoned for fifteen months 
at Dijon during the Terror. That imprisonment, how- 
ever, procured him the lifelong friendship of fellow- 
captives, Guitant and his wife, who offered him a home 
from 1794 to 1802, and he thus became intimate with 
Chateaubriand and Joubert. Chateaubriand styled him 
the Greek Englishman. Marrying a Frenchwoman, he 
indulged his passion for Greek authors, for the chase, 
and for travelling. On the death of a daughter in 1832, 
Chateaubriand, then himself a political prisoner, wrote 
an elegy on her. Frisell published in French a treatise 
on the British constitution, and presented a copy of it 
to Louis Napoleon in Switzerland, who promised him 
in return his own sketch of a French constitution. 
Frisell also contributed to the Journal des Debats} 
He turned Catholic just before his death, which took 
place at Torquay in 1846. 

The fourth Anglo-Frenchman was Henry Grey 
MacNab, a scion of a Scotch-Irish family who had 
studied under Reid at Glasgow University. When 
detained in 1803 he went to Montpellier for eleven 
years, there studying medicine, political economy, and 
pedagogy. Before quitting England he had published 

1 Fraser' s Mag. 1860 : le Correspondant, 1897-1898. 



NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 117 

a pamphlet against a proposed tax on coal, and in Paris 
in 1808 he wrote on education, on Robert Owen, of 
whom he was an enthusiastic admirer, and on the state 
of the world at the beginning of the 19th century. He 
was honorary physician to the Duke of Kent, to whom 
he dedicated his book on Owen and whose portrait he 
prefixed to the French translation. He died in Paris 
in 1823, leaving an unfinished work on premature 
burial. 

Some visitors deserve notice on account of kinsmen or 
friends. There are Mary and Agnes Berry, for instance, 
the ' sister- wives ' of Horace Walpole, one of whom, 
born in 1743, survived till 1852. They accompanied 
their father. Mrs. Darner introduced them to Napoleon, 
his mother, Josephine, and Madame de Stael. This 
last lady thought Mary by far the cleverest English- 
woman she had met. The Berrys had seen Paris in 
1791. They must have been pleased with their visit in 
the spring of 1802, for they went again in October with 
Mrs. Damer on their way to Nice and Geneva, passing 
through Germany and embarking at Hamburg for 
England in May. We may dispose more summarily of 
Francis (brother of Sir John) Moore ; William Monsell, 
whose son, successively Paymaster- General, Postmaster- 
General, and Vice-President of the Board of Trade, 
became Lord Emly ; and Sir Herbert Pakington, grand- 
father of the Secretary for War of 1867-1868. Henry 
Bickersteth, surgeon, was the father of the hymnologist 
and of Lord Langdale, Master of the Rolls, while Sir 
Henry Tichborne and his brother James were respec- 
tively great-uncle and grandfather of the Roger 



118 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Tichborne personated by Arthur Orton. Henry Herbert 
Soutbey, a youth of nineteen studying medicine at 
Norwich, had there made the acquaintance of WiUiam 
Taylor, whom be now accompanied. His brother, the 
poet, had, on a visit to Norwich in 1798, formed a 
friendship with Taylor, in spite of their political and reli- 
gious differences. Young Soutbey became physician to 
George iv. and Queen Adelaide.^ Timothy Priestley 
must have been the son of Timothy, brother of the 
famous Priestley. The two brothers, both Noncon- 
formist ministers, differed in doctrine. James WoU- 
stonecraft was probably one of the three brothers of 
Mary. He was a London merchant, and in 1798 had 
been expelled from Paris, apparently as a suspected spy. 
A Mr. Adderley was probably Charles Bowyer Adderley, 
great-uncle of the present Lord Norton, but he may 
have been Thomas Adderley, an Irish M.P. in 1790. 
Mrs. Peploe of Herefordshire, who accompanied her 
husband, was the aunt of Sir George Cornewall Lewis. 
Anthony Storer, Secretary of the Paris Embassy in 
1783, was apparently the nephew and heir of Anthony 
Morris Storer of Purley, a man of fashion and a 
bibliophile, an M.P. in 1772. General Scott was 
probably the father-in-law of Canning and of the Duke 
of Portland ; he was reputed to have made money at 
previous visits by gambling, and Canning's wife had a 
bequest of £100,000. Shuckburgh Ashby Apreece had 
a fascinating wife, the widow of a John Kerr. Her 
literary receptions at Edinburgh were famous, and 

^ Another brother was captured at sea during the war and incar- 
cerated at Brest. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 119 

people fancied she was the original of Madame de 
Stael's Corinne. Again a widow, she married in 1812 
Sir Humphry Davy. A Mr. Tilt was probably the 
father of John Tilt, a Brighton physician who intro- 
duced into England the speculum, with which he had 
become acquainted through Recamier. Denis Disney 
Ffytche was doubtless the nephew of Dr. John Disney, a 
Lincolnshire vicar related I think to the Tennysons, 
who became a noted Unitarian minister in London, and 
also of Lewis Disney of Swinderby, who added his wife's 
name of Ffytche. If so, he must have been bent on 
recovering his uncle's property at Chambourcy, near 
Paris, for Lewis Disney, leaving for Switzerland with 
his two daughters and their governess in March 1793, 
had been classed as an Emigre and had vainly pleaded 
for restitution. James Forbes, a nabob of whom we 
shall hear again, was the grandfather of Montalembert, 
the French historian. Of Richard Trench, a barrister, 
father of Archbishop Trench, we shall also hear later 
on. John Sympson Jessopp, a landowner and barrister, 
was destined to be the father of Dr. Augustus Jessopp. 
He was accompanied by his younger brother, and we 
shall hear of them too again. 

Should we reckon among Englishmen George Francis 
Grand, Madame Talleyrand's first husband? He was 
a native of Lausanne, but entered the East India 
Company's service, started an English factory, and 
married in India Catherine Noel Judde, daughter of 
Peter John Worle, a Dane, harbour-master of Chander- 
nagor. He divorced her in India, and in 1798, hav- 
ing returned to Europe in straitened circumstances, 



120 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

obtained a French divorce likewise. He now repaired 
tx) Paris, to solicit through his ex-wife's influence a 
Government appointment; but he was unjustly sus- 
pected of seeking to extort money from Talleyrand. It 
was alleged, indeed, that he exacted 80,000 f. by a 
threat of disputing the validity of the divorce, and that 
on returning to London he demanded an additional 
£10,000. ' Never did a husband,' writes a Bourbon agent, 
' make so much profit out of his wife's infideUty, and 
never did a man play so pitiful a role as M. de Talley- 
rand.' ^ What is certain is that Grand was assigned a 
post at the Cape under the so-called Batavian republic, 
really a French dependency. When England seized 
the Cape he remained there till his death in 1821.^ 
He is said to have married again. 

There were fugitives from law or justice, and other 
black sheep. William Ward, yeoman and land-agent 
of Benenden, Kent, who had been enthusiastic for the 
French Revolution, got into difficulties — 'through 
slovenly book-keeping ' says Mr. C. F. Hardy, editor of 
the Benenden Letters, — and took refuge in France, where 
he died in 1821, aged ninety- three. He had settled at 
"Valenciennes, and under the Berlin decree of 1807 was 
for five years, in spite of his age, treated as a prisoner 
of war. His honesty seems unimpeachable, but as 
much cannot be said for another land-agent, Thomas 
Stone, who had acted for the Duke of Bedford and for 
Lord Digby. They had every apparent reason to trust 
him, for he was an Enclosure Commissioner and was 
employed by the Board of Agriculture in writing 

1 Remade. ^ Gentleman's Magazine. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 121 

county reports. His love of style and conviviality, how- 
ever, led him astray, and he now absconded to Paris 
with his wife and five children, leaving a large sum due 
to Lord Digby. He for a time lived in luxury, affected 
to be bent on improving French agriculture, and talked 
of buying and stocking a large farm. In reality he had 
no money, and in 1804 he was charged with forging 
a cheque, but was acquitted. He more than once 
applied for permission to visit Normandy to buy sheep, 
but was refused.^ Latterly dependent on the earnings 
of his wife and daughter, he died in Paris in 1815, at the 
age of eighty- three. Speaking of land-agents reminds me 
that some small English land-owners, as the Marquis of 
Buckingham was informed, sold their property, invested 
part of the proceeds in the funds, so as to ensure the 
same income as before, and had settled in France on 
land purchased at ten and a half years' rental. Such 
cases, however, must have been very rare, and Napoleon, 
as we have seen, debarred foreigners from holding real 
property; but Thomas Talbot, brother of an admiral, 
may have had the idea of colonisation in France, 
though he ultimately obtained a grant of 5000 acres on 
the shore of Lake Erie, where he founded Port Talbot. 
As for artisans who went over, enticed by reports of 
high wages and cheap living, they were speedily 
disillusioned and were glad to return. 

We may include among the outlaws, though he was 
not of English birth, Bodini, who had been editor of 
Bell's Messenger and had been expelled under the Alien 
Act. He joined the staff of the Argus in Paris. A 

1 A. F. iv. 1503. 



122 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

note of the Frencli police describes him as a man of 
caustic speech, turning everything into ridicule, and 
consequently having no friends. He pretended, it says, 
to have made important revelations to Napoleon, for 
whom, according to another account, he dissected, so 
to speak, the London newspapers. 

We come lastly to emigres who took the opportunity 
of returning to France, for several of them were Britons 
by birth, while others, having resided in England, 
possess some interest for us. There was Charles Jern- 
ingham, who had served in the French army, and now, 
reclaiming confiscated papers, pleaded that he had 
never in exile fought against France.^ Lady Jerning- 
ham, his mother, however, was so patriotic an English- 
woman that on the renewal of the war she proposed 
to raise and head a body of six hundred men, who, 
in case of invasion, should drive aU the cattle from 
the East Anglian coast into the interior of the country. 
Daniel Charles O'Connell, of Darrynane, styled in 
France Count O'Connell, uncle of the Liberator, was 
one of the earliest arrivals. Entering the French 
army in 1762 at the age of seventeen, he had taken 
part in the siege of Gibraltar in 1766, and in 1788 
had drawn up articles of war by which the French 
army is still governed. On the fall of the monarchy 
he went to England, where in 1796 he married the 
Countess Bellevue, an exile like himself In February 
1802 he repaired to Paris with his wife and two step- 
daughters, in the hope of recovering her property in 
St. Domingo. He calculated on returning in August, 

^ F. 7, 5735 ; T. 1112 ; Jerningham Letters. 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 123 

but he stayed, as we shall see, too long. He was 
naturalised in 1818, and was made a French peer; he 
died in 1835. Another emigre was Arthur Dillon, a 
connection of the guillotined general of that name, 
who had with difficulty escaped from France during 
the Terror. Curiously enough Rene de Montalembert, 
though an emigre, visited Paris as an English officer, 
for in 1799 he had entered the British army, and had 
served in the West Indies and Egypt. He afterwards 
served in India and Spain, rising to the rank of lieu- 
tenant-colonel, but after Waterloo returned to France 
and was appointed to an embassy at Stuttgart. He 
had married in 1808 James Forbes's daughter, Eliza 
Rose, and their son, mostly brought up by Forbes, was 
the historian of whom Pasquier aptly said, 'he is an 
Anglo-Saxon Frenchman.' Fagan, ex- captain in Dillon's 
regiment, who also re-entered France, was despatched 
in 1810 by Fouche, without Napoleon's knowledge, to 
discuss peace with Lord Wellesley. This occasioned 
Fouche's dismissal. Alexander d'Arblay preceded his 
English wife, the famous Fanny Burney. His friend 
Lauriston had arranged that, after serving a year in 
St. Domingo, he should retire from the French army 
on a pension ; but on his writing an indiscreet letter to 
Napoleon to say that he could never bear arms against 
England he was struck off the roll. Hoping, however, 
that Napoleon's irritation would evaporate, he sent 
for his wife and child in April 1802, and on war break- 
ing out they were unable, being French subjects, to 
return to England till 1812, when, during the Emperor's 
absence, d'Arblay managed to procure a passport for 



124 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

them. He himself had meanwhile obtained a post in 
the Ministry of the Interior. Lally ToUendal, who went 
over to obtain restitution of his property, had also 
married an Englishwoman, Amelia Hardcastle, and in 
April 1802 she rejoined her husband and his daughter 
by his first wife. 

The most prominent of the returning exiles was 
Calonne, Louis xvi.'s Minister of Finance. He was 
the man who, when asked by Marie Antoinette to do 
something which she acknowledged to be difficult, 
replied, 'If it is merely difficult, madam, you may 
consider it already done: if it is impossible it shall 
be done.' Shortly after his dismissal from office he 
had married Madame Haveley, widow of a rich Paris 
financier. She is described as English, but I am un- 
able to ascertain her maiden name. Taking refuge 
in England in 1788, and there assisting Madame La 
Motte in her scurrilous pamphlet on the diamond neck- 
lace, Calonne was at first very bountiful to his fellow- 
exiles, but he soon quarrelled with them. He went 
to Paris in May 1802, but must have intended return- 
ing to England, for he had applied to Merry for a 
passport when he was taken ill, and expired on the 
30th September. Another prominent politician was 
Montlosier, the member of the National Assembly who, 
in opposing the confiscation of the bishops' revenues, 
exclaimed, 'You deprive them of their gold crosses, 
but they will take the wooden cross which has saved 
the world.' He had edited the Courrier de Londres, 
which was so favourable to Napoleon that he was 
allowed to return from exile and have his paper partly 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 125 

printed in Paris. It was, however, suppressed after a 
few weeks, and Montlosier was appointed editor of the 
Bulletin de Paris, in which he requited British hospi- 
tality by vihfying the English. In all other respects 
his political career down to his death in 1838 was 
highly creditable. Cazales, who before emigrating had 
deprecated violent measures in the National Assembly, 
also re-entered France, and was offered, but declined, 
office under the Consulate. 

The Duke and Duchess de Fitz-James — he was a 
descendant of James ii. with the bend sinister — were 
emigres of a different stamp, being staunch royalists. 
So also, I believe, was Colonel O'Mahony. Patrick 
Wall, who at eighteen had in 1745 been with the 
Young Pretender, had been wounded at Culloden, and 
had then entered the French army, in like manner 
returned to France. An uncle, also a Jacobite refugee, 
had bequeathed him a handsome property. He died 
at Chatillon-sur-Seine in 1809. 

The returning exiles included a multitude of priests. 
Sir John Carr crossed over from Southampton to Havre 
with some of them, one being, he says, ninety- five years 
of age, who was scarcely expected to land alive. There 
were also wives and daughters of Toulon refugees. It 
is unpleasant to read in Henri Martin's history that 
some of these clerical passengers afterwards repaid the 
hospitality they had enjoyed, by vilifying England in 
episcopal pastorals, in order to curry favour with 
Napoleon. 



Ill 

AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 

Parisian Attractions — Napoleon — Foreign Notabilities — Mutual 
Impressions — Marriages and Deaths — Return Visits. 

It is now time to ask what was seen and done by the 
visitors. The rue de Rivoli did not yet exist, and 
a labyrinth of dingy streets separated the Tuileries 
from the Louvre, but the Champs Elysees were an 
agreeable promenade, though of course not yet ter- 
minated by the Arc de Triomphe, and the Bois de 
Boulogne had recovered from the vandalism of the 
Revolution, while on Sundays, when Napoleon held 
receptions at St. Cloud, the road thither was as 
crowded with carriages as that to Versailles before 
1789. Lovers of art had the opportunity of inspect- 
ing the spoils of Italy, a portion of which had to be 
restored in 1815, though but for Napoleon's escape 
from Elba restitution would not have been demanded. 
He told Lord Ebrington who, as will be seen, visited 
him in that island that he felt some remorse at having 
thus despoiled Italy, but he had then thought only 
of France. Not only was the Louvre thus enriched 
with paintings and sculptures,^ but the bronze lion 

1 Weston tells us that some of the pictures, much damaged in. 
transit, had had to be repaired. Shepherd noticed many soldiers at 
the Louvre gazing triumphantly at the pictures conquered by them. 

126 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 127 

and horses of Venice had been placed on pedestals 
outside the Tuileries. The biennial Salon also opened 
at the Louvre in September 1802, and in another part 
of the building was the Industrial Exhibition visited, 
as we have seen, by Fox. This, according to a police 
report, particularly interested the English. 'Among 
them,' it says, 'have been noticed artisans, who were 
never tired of examining and admiring, while others 
tried to understand the mechanism of the objects ex- 
hibited. Some observers conclude that this study may 
lead to imitation of these productions in England.' 
But the visitors might be proud of seeing several of 
their countrymen among the medallists, viz., Hall, who 
had a pottery at Montereau, near Fontainebleau, and 
Christopher Potter, of whom more anon. Engraving 
on glass, too, had been carried to perfection by Robert 
May O'Reilly, an Irishman whose factory attracted 
visitors. He published in 1803 a monthly magazine 
on arts and manufactures. A member of the British 
Club at Paris in 1792-1793, he had since served in the 
French army. He audaciously visited London during 
the peace, thus risking arrest for high treason.^ There 
was also the opportunity of witnessing Fulton's steam- 
boat experiments on the Seine. Fulton mostly lived 
in Paris from 1799 to 1804, vainly trying to interest 
the Government first in torpedoes and then, with a 
view to the invasion of England, in steam navigation. 
He lived with Joel Barlow, with whom he speculated 
in panoramas, then a popular novelty. Both, how- 
ever, went over to England in the summer of 1802. 

^ Redhead Yorke, Letters from France. 



128 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Merry granted a passport to Barlow, but did so by 
mistake in ignorance of his relations with English 
agitators, and he suggested that a list of obnoxious 
foreigners should be sent him, so that he might in 
future refuse such applications. Yet Barlow after all 
used an American passport. In notifying a passport 
to Fulton, Merry, mindful of his proposal for blowing 
up English vessels, added the warning, 'verbum sap.' 
Fulton was back in Paris in August in 1803, for in that 
month his steamboat, in the presence of Carnot and 
Volney, went up and down the Seine for an hour and a 
half Another, but much less important, improvement 
in locomotion was the first attempt, at the instance 
of Dillon, a Hiberno-Neapolitan engineer, to introduce 
foot pavements. Guizot married his daughter as his 
second wife. Professor Charles, whose future young 
wife was Lamartine's innamiorata, lectured on chemistry, 
moreover, to fashionable audiences. His electrifying 
machine and scientific apparatus at the Louvre were 
inspected by Carr. Dupuis, who had sat in the Con- 
vention, could be heard expounding his cosmical ex- 
planation of myths, which had been enthusiastically 
adopted by his friend Lalande and by the Abbe Bar- 
thelemi. Dupuis also claimed to have in 1778 invented 
semaphore signals. 

The Abbe Morellet, last survivor of the Encycloped- 
ists, might be met in society, full of revolutionary and 
pre-revolutionary experiences; and Roget de I'lsle, 
the author of the Marseillaise, frequented Frascati 
gardens. Henri Beyle was also in Paris, having just 
quitted the army, and was taking lessons in English 



i 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 129 

from Dawtram and an Irish Franciscan whom he calls 
'Jeki,' but nobody could foresee in him the future 
Stendhal, who was to illumine French literature ; nor 
did Sutton Sharpe, junior, till long afterwards make his 
acquaintance. Senancour was probably in Paris, super- 
intending the publication of Ohermann, but he was 
not likely to be seen in the frivolous or fashionable 
circles frequented by the English. A few of the visitors, 
indeed, attended lectures,^ listening attentively and 
putting questions to Laplace, Lalande, or Cuvier, but 
the great majority were bent on pleasure. Frascati, 
Tivoli, the hotel Richelieu (the roue's old mansion and 
grounds, now used not only for a hotel but for balls 
and concerts), and the so-called Hameau Chantilly 
were thronged, not to speak of the theatres, which 
had a very profitable season. Mole, it is true, retired 
in April 1802, dying in the following December, but 
there were such tragedians as Talma, Raucourt, Contat, 
Mars, and George, such dancers as Vestris, who was 
about, however, to retire, such vocalists as Cherubini, 



1 One of these was Manning. At first, indeed, imperfect knowledge 
of French deterred him, for Lamb wrote to him : — ' Your letter 
was just what a letter should be, crammed and very funny. Every 
part of it pleased me till you came to Paris, then your philo- 
sophical indolence or indifference stung me. You cannot stir from 
your rooms till you know the language. What the devil ! Are men 
nothing but ear-trumpets ? Are men all tongue and ear ? ' 

But presently he says :—'... the god-like face of the First 
Consul. ... I envy you your access to this great man much more than 
your seances and conversaziones, which I have a shrewd suspicion 
must be something dull.' (S. Wheeler, ieWers of Lamb.) 

Among the lectures by which he profited were those on Chinese 
by Joseph Heger, a German whom he may have previously met in 
London. 



130 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

such instrumentalists as Kreutzer. In February 1802 
there was the opportunity of witnessing Duval's 
Edouard en lEcosse, which (though intended only as 
a glorification of the Young Pretender, who in France 
was always styled Edward) was so boisterously applauded 
by royalists as applicable to the Bourbons, that Napo- 
leon, present at the second performance, suppressed 
it. Blangini taught singing, and among his pupils 
were Miss Whitworth, Quintin Craufurd's wife and 
step-daughter, Lady Conyngham, Lady Annesley, and 
Lady Liddell. The Journal des Dames of May 10, 
1802, speaking of the influx of parents anxious for 
their children to learn accomplishments, says : — ' In 
what other European city could a pupil have two 
musicians like Garat and Plantade for singing, two 
professors like Staybelt and Puppo for the piano, 
two virtuosi like Bode and Kreutzer for the violin, 
two composers like Paesiello and Mehul for music, 
and a man like Deshayes for dancing ? ' Paris, more- 
over, in spite of the Revolution again set the fashions, 
and though its transparent dresses, 'worn with such 
grace,' says George Jackson, 'as to reconcile you to 
them,' had never, whether on account of modesty or 
climate, been adopted in England, the Times in 1801 
described the way in which Parisian ladies wore their 
hair. Lap-dogs were frequently to be seen under the 
arms of promenaders, or in fine weather running at 
their heels.^ Shoe-buckles and knee-breeches, though 
not wigs, had been revived, and foreign ambassadors 
were resplendent with decorations and diamonds ; yet 

^ Holcroft, Travels. 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPKESSIONS 131 

' muddy boots and dirty linen were seen at Madame 
Fouche's receptions,' ' the roughnesses of the Revolu- 
tion/ says Jackson, 'not being yet polished off.' 
Mademoiselle Bertin, Marie Antoinette's dressmaker, 
had returned from exile. Bonaparte, too, had imposed 
costumes on all public functionaries, and Paris had 
never seen more brilliant uniforms. His two hundred 
Mamelukes had been sent up to Paris to figure in the 
review of the 14th July, which was then, as it is now 
again, the national festival, and in honour of the peace 
he reviewed 14,000 troops in the Carrousel. 

Napoleon took particular note of the British military 
uniforms at his receptions, and many British officers 
witnessed a grand review by Moreau on the 8th 
September 1802. Maurice Dudevant, the future father 
of George Sand, wrote to his mother : — 

' All these young lords, who are soldiers at home, question 
me with avidity on our army. I reply by the recital of our 
immortal exploits (in Italy), which they cannot sufficiently 
admire.' 

As for private and official festivities, visitors were 
all anxious to see Madame Tallien, 'our Lady of 
Thermidor,' now, as I have said, the mistress of the 
army contractor Ouvrard. Madame Recamier gave 
musical parties at Clichy, she herself playing on the 
piano, Madame de Montesson, morganatic widow of 
the Duke of Orleans, Madame Lebrun, wife of the 
consul, and Madame Junot (Duchess d'Abrantes) also 
gave entertainments. At some of these Garat's inimit- 
able voice was to be heard, though he no longer sang 



132 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

in public. Madame de Genlis, though not able on her 
pension of 6600 f. to afford dinners, received callers, 
Talleyrand had been, or was about to be, forced by 
Napoleon to marry Madame Grand, as the only alter- 
native to dismissing her, in order that ambassadors' 
wives might visit his house, and he was very hospitable 
to English notabilities, though there is no reason to 
think that our Government had given him the £16,000 
on which, as Francis Jackson wrote to Speaker Abbot, 
he counted for having concluded peace. Spain, how- 
ever, had given him a like sum, and Jackson satirically 
suggested that such presents would serve as a trousseau 
for the lady on the arrival of the dispensation from 
Rome. But Talleyrand received a dispensation, not 
from the vow of celibacy, but merely from the obliga- 
tion of daily reciting the breviary. Whitworth was 
therefore mistaken in justifying his wife's acceptance 
of Madame Talleyrand's invitations on the ground that 
the church had sanctioned her marriage. 
The Times of January 13, 1803, says : — 

' Monsieur, or rather Madame, Talleyrand's dinners, exceed 
all others in Paris ; about 80 persons sat down to the last 
dinner. On the table was placed every delicacy possible to 
be had, and a servant in livery, belonging to the house, 
behind every chair. The second course, put on like magic, 
more elegant than the first ; around the room, in niches 
made for the purpose, were statues of the finest marble, each 
supporting a basket on its head, holding a branch of lustres 
of about ten lights each, altogether making more than four 
hundred lights in the room; the furniture of velvet and gold, 
corresponding with the other elegancies ; three rooms were 
fitted up in this manner, forming a most complete suit. A 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 188 

very handsome salary is allowed to this Minister, exclusively 
for the support of his table. ' 

Talleyrand doubtless allowed his guests plenty of 
time to do justice to his sumptuous fare, whereas 
Napoleon unpleasantly hurried over his dinners in half 
an hour. He deputed prefects, however, to preside in 
his place at less expeditious state banquets. 

Lechevalier, of the Foreign Office, who had lived 
in England and had taught French to Sir F. Burdett 
and his wife and her sisters, also laid himself out to 
be agreeable to British visitors. There was a rage 
for dancing, not dancing on a volcano ready to explode, 
as was said in July 1830, but on the ashes of an 
extinct one. 

Conversation, on the other hand, as we learn from 
German visitors, languished. The salons of the old 
monarchy, where brilliant paradox and ruthless scepti- 
cism had flourished, found no successors. It was not 
safe to talk politics, for spies abounded, and even the 
Institute had to avoid philosophy, legislation, or soci- 
ology. ^ Riddles were consequently in vogue. But 
La Metherie, the mineralogist, and his guests ventured 
to condemn the tyranny of the Consulate, and Besnard 
relates how Lord Archibald Hamilton, after hearing 
one of these outbursts, exclaimed, 'Too fortunate 
Frenchmen ! You have apricots, peaches, cheap and 
good wine, and yet you complain,' while, turning to 
Besnard, he whispered : ' A peach with us costs 4/ or 5/ 
and a bottle of champagne or burgundy a guinea.' 
The old nobility, indeed, such of them as had remained 

^ Mdmoires d'un Nonagenaire. 



134 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

or returned, were too impoverislied to live in great 
style, but the nouveaux riches, financiers and con- 
tractors, had installed themselves in rural mansions, 
yet did not succeed in imitating the old aristocracy. 
They were lavish in some things, parsimonious in 
others. Stables, gardens, and woods were allowed to 
become slovenly. ' There is at present no veritable 
society/ says a contemporary, and nobody in the 
country kept open house.^ ' Those people who chose 
to be presented at Bonaparte's court,' says Mrs. Villiers 
(afterwards Lady Clarendon), ' were invited to many 
magnificent dinners and assemblies (balls) given by 
the ministers, but as ourselves, with a very few other 
exceptions, did not feel inclined to pay homage to 
Bonaparte, the theatres and the entertainments given 
by foreigners were mostly our resources.'- Mrs. Villiers 
was certainly, as she says, an exception, as also were 
Montagu and Ryder, a future peer who declined to be 
introduced to Napoleon, for it was not till the renewal 
of the war that admiration turned to hatred and that 
Bonaparte became a bogey with which children were 
frightened. Even then no Englishman would have 
gone the length of saying, as a French ecclesiastic 
has done nearly a century afterwards, that ' Napoleon 
was the greatest enemy of God and of mankind. 
Would that his name could be effaced from human 
memories ! ' ^ A royalist agent remarks : — 

' M. de Calonne states that in England the enthusiasm for 

^ De Bray, Eevue de Paris, February 15 and March 1, 1901. 

2 Westmorland MSB. (Hist. MSS. Commission). 

^ Mgr. Justin Fevra, Revue du Monde Catholique, June 15, 1900. 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 135 

Bonaparte is not only general, but carried to an extent 
which it is difficult to conceive. The Court and the city, 
the capital and the provinces, all classes of citizens, from 
ministers to artisans, are agreed to publish his praises and 
vie in chanting his victories and the lustre of his rule.' ^ 

Yet Phillips's Practical Guide during a Journey 
frcym London to Paris, the first book of its kind, 
had said : — 

' We shall only express our wish that the great man who 
has done so much for France and mankind may moderate 
his ambition and make the illustrious Washington his 
political model.' 

Englishmen anxious to see republican forms and 
manners were satirically recommended by the Times, 
December 1, 1802, to lose no time in visiting Paris, 
or the whole ancient system of the court, with all 
its formalities and regulations, would arrive before 
them. ' The ladies of the old court,' it added, — 

'are in great request in the circle of Madame Bonaparte, 
and several of the most pronounced royalists among the 
emigrants are already Men acclimates at the Thuilleries. In 
the gardens of this palace, no persons are admitted to walk 
in the Jacobin costume. Cocked hats are indispensable to 
all who would not be turned out by the sentries. The high 
^071 and extravagance of dress are generally restored, and 
the fashions at least are as Anti-Jacobin as possible. Tu 
and Toi, and Citoyen, which for some time have been banished 
to the Faux-bourghs and the Offices, are totally out of use 
in addressing the Consul or Ministers, and would pass for 
the grossness of disaffection at Court. In short, everything 

^ Remade, Bonaparte et Us Bourbons, p. 99. 



136 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

is returning rapidly to that gaiety, splendour, and urbanity, 
which is the characteristic of the nation. It was the 
ingenious expression of a distinguished lady a few nights 
since at the Thuilleries — that "she saw the whole of the 
ancient monarchy excepting the Bourbons ! " ' 

This reminds us of Victor Hugo's well-known 
couplet : — 

' Ce siecle avait deux ans, Rome remplagait Sparte, 
Deja Napoleon pergait sous Bonaparte.' 

A letter from an officer published in the same journal 
on the 9th February 1803 says : — 

' Nothing can be more wretched or discontented than all 
descriptions of people ; all ruined except a few upstarts, 
who are immediately self-interested in the present system. 
It is completely a military government, and the country is 
kept quiet by the bayonet alone : — taxed at half their 
income, and more taxes to be laid on. 

' The roads wretched — cut up by the artillery and ammuni- 
tion-waggons, and in no places repaired, but a little picked 
in on the straight road from Calais to Paris for Lord Corn- 
wallis. Crowded with turnpikes, the produce of which is 
applied to the public purse, and not to mend their ways. 
The Inns, as formerly, dirty, and good eating and drinking 
very dear. The lower classes are civil, — the higher very 
haughty. 

' Yet notwithstanding the distress and poverty of the 
country, there are no less than 26 theatres open and crowded 
every night in Paris, independent of shows, jugglers, etc. 
Nobody can form an idea of what an Opera is, unless they 
have seen the present style of one in Paris — so superb. 

' The Bishop of Durham would expire at seeing the dresses 
of the performers. The ladies are almost quite naked, and 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 137 

really not covered enough to give the least idea of modesty. 
There cannot be anything so profligate, so debauched, or so 
immoral, as the ideas or manners of all ranks of people, 
particularly the higher class ; and poor Virtue and Decency 
are entirely banished their Calendars. 

' The daughter of Madame Bonaparte sits every night in 
a crimson and gold box at the Opera. The Consul in one 
directly below, with a gilded grating towards the audience, 
who see very little of him. He leaves the house before the 
dropping of the curtain, and escorted by a strong guard of 
cavalry and torches sets off full gallop for Malmaison, where 
he sleeps.' 

Another visitor is reported by the Times as describ- 
ing Paris as ' more immersed in luxury than at any 
former period. The theatres are every night full, and 
the political coffee-houses, unless on particular occa- 
sions, nearly empty. Provisions of every kind are 
cheap and plentiful, and the best wine may be had 
at three livres the bottle.' 

Whether by way of entertaining one another or of 
reciprocating French hospitality, some of the British 
visitors gave receptions and balls. Maurice Dudevant 
speaks of Lady Higginson's balls, where he seems to 
have heard French nobles decrying their own country, 
and he warned Englishmen against judging France 
by this unpatriotic class. He may have been one of Lord 
Robert Spencer's guests at Robert's famous restaurant. 
The Duchess of Gordon and Mrs. Orby Hunter were 
prominent for their entertainments, and a Paris news- 
paper mentions those of Lady 'Shumley,' a phonetic 
approximation to Cholmondeley. Jerningham speaks 
of the Duchess of Gordon's balls, and of her addiction 



138 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

to plajnng at hasard, at whicli she rattled the dice, 
and whenever she lost exclaimed, ' God damn ! ' 
Eliza Orby Hunter, aged twenty-three, was apparently 
the wife of George Orby Hunter, who afterwards, living 
at Dieppe, translated Byron into French verse, and died 
in 1843.^ The Orby Hunter family were owners of 
Croyland, Lincolnshire. 

' Paris,' wrote Colonel Ferrier to his sister, 'is certainly 
the place of all others for young men. Plenty of amuse- 
ment without dissipation ; no drinking ; if a gentleman 
was seen drunk here he would be looked upon as a 
perfect hete.'^ If, however, there was less drinking than 
in London, there was clearly more gambling. John 
Sympson Jessopp left with the impression that debauch- 
ery abounded. With the natural English desire to 
see everything, he found himself one night, with his 
younger brother, in a magnificent gambling-house. 
Somebody who had lost heavily fell upon the croupier, 
snatched his rake from him, laid about him furiously, 
then hit out at a huge chandelier, with scores of wax 
candles in it, and frantically smashed it. There was 
terrible panic and confusion. One of the croupiers 
slipped out through a door leading to a staircase to 
fetch the police. Jessopp, plucking his brother by 
the sleeve, managed to get down the stairs and into 
the street, where they concealed themselves in a door- 
way. In a few minutes a company of gendarmes 

^ Charles Orby Hunter, probably his father, had died at Paris in 1791. 

2 Reichardt, however, comparing France with Germany, speaks of 
the increase of drinking, and of young men deliberately assembling for 
a carouse ; he also speaks of gormandising. 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 139 

hastened up, and leaving two of their comrades at 
the door mounted the stairs, arrested every soul on 
the premises, and carried them off to the lock-up. 
The two young Englishmen, watching their opportunity, 
hurried back to their hotel. The sequel they never 
heard.2 Francis Jackson, moreover, writing to Abbot, 
described Paris life as an uninterrupted picture of 
vulgarity and profligacy, and the Times of the 23rd 
September says : — 

' Paris, under the Regent of Orleans, was not so profligate 
and corrupt as it appears to our best travellers at present. 
Gambling, debauchery, intemperance, and the insatiable 
desire after public spectacles, with all the vices in the train 
of indolence and licentiousness, form the monotonous 
indiscriminable character of the Citizens.' 

Some of the visitors must have shared in the 
stupefaction felt on the 21st January 1803 at seeing the 
Madeleine draped in crape in memory of the anniversary 
of Louis xvi.'s death, but they were as ignorant as the 
rest of the world that this audacious celebration was 
the act of a man of English parentage, Hyde de 
NeuviUe. The Madeleine, as Holcroft tells us, was then 
'a grand colonnade of lofty uncorniced pillars, rising 
about roofless, half-finished walls.' 

British visitors had the opportunity of mixing with 
some of their countrymen. There was Paine, until his 
return in September 1802 to America, where his friend 
Jefferson had become President, and we have seen that 
Redhead Yorke and Rickman renewed acquaintance 

^ Information kindly supplied by Canon Jessopp. 



140 NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 

witli him. He liad had to wait, not only for funds, but 
for a safe passage without fear of British cruisers. 
When Redhead Yorke with some difficulty recalled 
himself to his remembrance, Paine thus unbosomed 
himself: — 

'Who would have thought that we should meet [again 
after the lapse of ten years] at Paris'? . . . They (the 
French) have shed blood enough for liberty, and now they 
have it in perfection ! This is not a country for an honest 
man to live in. They do not understand anything at 
all of the principles of free government, and the best way 
(for foreigners) is to leave them to themselves. You see 
they have conquered all Europe only to make it more 
miserable than it was before. . . . 

' Republic ! Do you call this a republic 1 Why they are 
worse off than the slaves at Constantinople, for they are ever 
expecting to be bashaws in Heaven by submitting to be 
slaves below; but here they believe neither in Heaven nor 
Hell, and yet are slaves by choice. I know of no republic 
in the world except America, which is the only country for 
such men as you and I. It is my intention to get away 
from this place as soon as possible, and I hope to be off in 
autumn. You are a young man, and may see better times, 
but I have done with Europe and its slavish politics.' 

Paine, it may be feared, experienced another dis- 
illusion on recrossing the Atlantic. Yorke does not 
seem to have told him of his own change of politics. 

Next to Paine in celebrity comes Helen Maria 
Williams, an eye-witness of the Revolution, whose 
reminiscences of Madame Roland must have been 
interesting. She was visited by Sharpe, Rogers, Lord 
Holland, Kemble, Poole, and Mrs. Cos way, though some 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 141 

English held aloof or even sneered at her. Her attire 
and manners were certainly open to ridicule/ and her 
cohabitation with John Hurford Stone, the refugee 
j)rinter, even assuming a secret marriage, exposed her 
to misconstruction. Stone's brother William, ruined 
by twenty-one months' imprisonment and arrested for 
debt on his acquittal for treason, had also gone to 
France, where he became overseer of a paper-hanging 
factory. We shall hear of him again. There was the 
widow of Sir Robert Smyth, who remained in Paris 
after her husband's death. She and her young 
children had been painted by Reynolds, and one of 
those children now married Lambton Este, a son of 
Charles Este, by turns actor, clergyman, and journalist. 
Smyth's old partner, James Millingen, son of a Dutch 
merchant settled in London, had remained in Paris 
after the Revolution, though his brother John Gideon 
had become an English naval official. He was after- 
wards an eminent archaeologist, and his son Michael, 
archaeologist and physician, attended Byron on his 
deathbed. Anastasia Howard, Baroness Stafford, an 
ex-nun, had likewise stayed in Paris after her release 
at the end of the Terror,^ though her fellow-nuns 
had in 1800 found a retreat in England. She died 

^ Reichardt, who met Bishop Gregoire and Kosciuski at her house, 
describes her as wearing a cap with long flaps covering her cheeks, 
and with a large bouquet falling down from her hair to her nose, so 
that with her constant nods and gesticulations there were only 
occasional glimpses of her eyes and mouth. He was bored, too, by 
the poetical recitations of Vigee, Madame Vigee-Lebrun's brother. 
Poole, however, was pleased at meeting so many literati, and Meyer, 
canon of Hamburg, thought the hostess resembled Angelica Kauf- 
mann. '^ Jerningham Letters, 1896. 



142 NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 

in 1807 at the age of eighty-four. Her nephew Charles 
Jerningham called on her, but though in good health, 
senility scarcely allowed her to recognise him. This 
reminds us of her co-religionists at the Austin convent. 
They, too, had survived the Revolution, and the 
Superior, Frances Lancaster, must have had much to 
tell Sir John Carr of how the nunnery was turned 
into a crowded political prison. Arabella Williams, 
daughter of David Mallet, author of Northern Anti- 
quities, had had more recent troubles. She had spent 
most of her life in Paris, but visits to London to obtain 
her share of her mother, Lucy Estob's, property 
brought on her the suspicion of the police and she was 
arrested. The banker Perregaux and others had to 
exonerate her from the charge of espionage.^ Another 
but more recent resident, representing the de^mi-monde, 
though that term had not yet been invented, was Mrs. 
Lindsay, the EUenore of Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, 
that romance of the Werther and Corinne school, in 
which the heroine, depicted as a Pole who deserts her 
old paramour and her children by him, clings to a man 
anxious to discard her. We do not even know her 
Christian name, unless she was the ' Lady Florence 
Lindsay ' whom Lady Morgan met at Florence in 1819. 
She is said to have been Irish on the father's and 
French on the mother's side ; handsome and sprightly, 
she had been brought up in good society. She had 
lived in Paris from 1786 to 1792, and her confiscated 
tradesmen's bills, still in the Archives,- indicate that 
she was then the mistress of Comte de Melfort, a man 

1 F. 7, 6251, dossier 4980. ^ t. 777 and 1640. 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 143 

of Scottish Jacobite ancestry. Another of her lovers 
was Vicomte Chretien de Lamoignon, who, the last of 
his family, was wounded at Quiberon, and after the 
Restoration was created a peer. She left France in 
1792, and in 1795 Chateaubriand made her acquaint- 
ance in London, where she was on visiting terms with 
the French aristocratic exiles. He styles her la 
derniere des Ninon. On his going to France in 
disguise in 1800 she, having meanwhile returned to 
Paris, met him at Calais, escorted him, and hired 
temporary lodgings for him near her own house. She 
paid half the rent and another friend the remainder. 
Constant met her in 1804, and after passing an agree- 
able evening with her, received a letter in which she 
said that they strikingly resembled each other, but 
' this is perhaps one reason the less against our suiting 
each other. It is because men resemble each other 
that Heaven created women, who do not resemble 
them.'^ Constant would have married her, however, 
but for her age and for her two illegitimate children. 
Charles Constant, Benjamin's cousin, describes her as 
intelligent but devoid of culture. In 1801 she trans- 
lated into French Cornelia Knight's Life of the 
Romans. It is commonly stated that she died at 
Angouleme in 1820 ; but if so it was under an assumed 
name, for I have ascertained that there is no Lindsay 
on the register. Then there was Mrs. Harvey, n4e 
Elizabeth Hill, naturalised in Tuscany, who in 1805 
was arrested on an unfounded charge of complicity in 
Georges' plot. Her daughter Henrietta, a miniature 

^ Revue Internationale, 1887. 



144 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

painter, petitioned for her release and the restitution of 
her papers, the petition being backed by Denon, 
curator of the Louvre. Scipio du Roure, son of the 
Marquis de Grisac and grandson of the Countess of 
Catherlough, Bolingbroke's sister, may almost be re- 
garded as an Englishman, for he had been educated at 
Oxford. He eloped with a Mrs. Sandon, who fired at 
her pursuing husband, whereupon du Roure was 
prosecuted as the delinquent. A flaw in the indict- 
ment secured his acquittal, but he had to take refuge 
in France. He arrived in the middle of the Revolution 
and was a member of the Paris Jacobin Commune, 
but was imprisoned in the Terror. He was now 
studying jurisprudence and translating Cobbett's 
Grammar. He went back to London to claim his 
mother's property and that of a half-brother named 
Knight, and died there in 1822. 

The war, putting a stop to British imports, had given 
a stimulus to French manufactures, several of which 
were carried on by Englishmen. These were mostly in 
the provinces, and English tradesmen had scarcely yet 
reappeared in Paris. Henry Sykes, for instance, unable 
to continue selling Wedgwood's pottery in the rue 
St. Honore, had in 1792 started cotton-spinning at St. 
Remy, though he had originally applied for and ob- 
tained the use of the unfinished Madeleine as a factory. 
The Convention, on the 29th April 1795, granted him a 
site for the erection of cotton mills at La Magdelaine, 
near Verneuil (Eure). He was joined in 1802 by his 
future son-in-law, William Waddington, of Walkering- 
ham, Notts, a descendant of Charles ii.'s Pendrells. 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 145 

Waddington, the grandfather of the French statesman 
of our day, apparently had a visit from his brother 
Samuel, a hop merchant at Tunbridge, who had 
published an answer to Burke's famous pamphlet, and 
in 1801 had been sentenced to £500 fine and a month's 
imprisonment for 'forestalling.' His fellow hop-mer- 
chants gave him an ovation on his release. Then there 
was Christopher Potter, who had been an army 
victualler and whose election for Colchester in 1784 led 
to the Act disqualifying Government contractors from 
sitting in Parliament. His successful opponent was Sir 
Robert Smyth, and the two rivals may have met in 
Paris. He reopened during the Revolution the porce- 
lain factory at Chantilly formerly carried on by the 
Conde princes, thus justifying his name — nomen omen 
— but he had now removed to Montereau. A police 
report of the 8th March 1796 thus denounced him : — 

' The Anglo-Pitts purchase nearly all the national property 
which is sold in the department of the Oise. Their chief 
broker is a man named Poter (sic), owner of the porcelaine 
factory at Chantilly, a man who was deep in debt two years 
ago, hut who has now paid up and is worth more than two 
millions. He was twice arrested under the revolutionary 
government. This man was twice M.P. in England, and 
belonged to the Court party. There is no doubt that he 
is in France the secret agent of Pitt, with whom he has 
been closely connected since the Revolution. He made 
many visits to England in 1792 and 1793, Since that 
time he has remained at Paris or Chantilly, where he daily 
makes purchases.' ^ 

1 A. F, iv. 1473. 



146 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

This report was made by an ' observer ' named Martin, 
whose chief, Marne, sent it in as usual to the Directory. 
That body, or probably Barras, who seems to have 
examined these daily reports, instructed Marne to 
inquire whether Potter really visited England in 1792- 
1793, whether there was any proof of his connection 
with the court party, whether there was any proba- 
bility of his being Pitt's agent, and what purchases he 
had made. Martin replied to this veiled rebuke on 
the 13th March :— 

' I have learned nothing further on Poter. My object 
was not to denounce him. I do not know him intimately. I 
have merely had to do my duty as observer, and to call 
attention to him, according to notices which have been 
transmitted to me by persons whom I believe to have no 
interest in calumniating him. My guarantee of all the facts 
is therefore solely for the purpose of my mission. It is 
then for the Government to watch any particular person. 
Here, however, is my reply to the various questions which 
have been submitted to me by citizen Marn6, and which 
I subjoin. 

' 1. Poter paid visits to England in 1792 and 1793, with- 
out this implying that he Avas betraying our cause, for our 
relations with England were not suspended till the middle 
of 1793 if I remember rightly. 

' 2. The real fact, and which Poter caunot contradict, is 
that he was twice M.P., and that the kind of popularity 
which he had gained induced the Court to place him on the 
list of candidates in 1783 or 1784 for making him a Minister. 
Pitt was the successful man. After that he fought a duel 
with the latter.^ Was it because he was not a Minister ? 

^ I can find no confirmation of this story. If there was a duel, it 
must have been with Thomas Pitt, Lord Camelford, but Christopher 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 147 

Thus the question whether he had then thrown himself into 
the Court party remains to be solved. It would not perhaps 
be difficult to ascertain the fact, for it is well known that Fox, 
driven from office, became more popular than ever. It is 
also known that he drew the Prince of Wales into the 
Opposition. 

' 3. As to this I will repeat what I have said above. It 
is for the Government to order its agents to watch him. As 
for me I promise to neglect nothing in Paris, and if any- 
positive facts reach me I will transmit them to the Directory. 
Only yesterday I ascertained where he lives and the places 
which he frequents. 

' 4. It is quite certain that Poter has made purchases 
besides his Chantilly factory. To ascertain this it will 
merely be necessary to apply to the Senlis district. I 
remember having stated in my report of the 16th (sic) 
that Poter eighteen months ago was in everybody's debt, 
and that now he had settled with everybody. This is 
perhaps what has given rise to the belief that he might 
have dealings with Pitt in France, for in fact his fortune 
at this moment is marvellous ; but it may be the result of 
great speculations or of stock-jobbing, which in the last 
twenty months has made the fortune of so many. 

' I think I have dwelt enough on this subject. I repeat 
that my sole object has been to do my duty as surveillant. 
I will add this. Formerly entrusted with powers by the 
General Security Committee in the department of the Oise, 
I ascertained that Poter did much good at Chantilly, that 
he professed republican principles, and that I had even 
occasion to render him justice before the committee against 
the persecution which for eleven months he had been under- 
going from the Chantilly revolutionary committee.' 

■was probably confused with Thomas Potter, a member of Wilkes's 
Hell-fire club, who, elected as an anti-Pittite, joined Pitt, and in 1756 
was appointed Paymaster of the Forces. The two Potters maj^ or 
may not have been kinsmen. 



148 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

These reports seem to have induced Barras to make 
Potter's acquaintance and to send him first to Malmes- 
bury 1 in Paris in 1796, and next to London in 1797, 
with an offer to conclude peace for a handsome bribe. 
On his return he warned the Directory that one of 
its members regularly communicated its deliberations 
to England. These relations with Barras probably 
protected him from further molestation during the 
Directory, but on the 13th December 1800 a police 
bulletin again denounced him as an English emissary 
sent to ruin French pottery and hat-making.^ In 1800 
he was a first-class medallist at the Paris Industrial 
Exhibition, and in 1802 he was one of the gold medal- 
lists to whom Napoleon gave a dinner. His Montereau 
factory, an old monastery where he employed a hundred 
men, was burnt down in 1802. He probably remained 
in France till 1814; he died in England three years 
later. 

Among the silver medallists in 1802 was White, a 
mechanical inventor, probably the uncle or grandfather 
of Dupont White, sub-Minister of Justice in 1848, 
President Carnot's father-in-law. The exhibits also 
included a filter by Smith, an Englishman, perhaps 
the James Smith who in 1813 succeeded to Stone's 
printing business. 

There were of courset eachers of English. They in- 
cluded Robert, of whom Napoleon might have learned 
the language at the Paris military school, a lost oppor- 

^ Malmesbury, who did not take the overture seriously, says — 'He 
came to me avec des j^rojets insenses. ' 
•2 A. F. iv. 1329. 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 149 

tunity whicli he regretted ; Mrs. Galignani, nee Parsons, 
who had married an Italian ex-priest, ultimately the 
founder of the newspaper bearing his name ; and 
Samuel Baldwin, employed before the Revolution in 
the French Foreign Oflfice, who was arrested as a spy 
in the Terror, and having been inscribed on a long list 
of prisoners for trial would, but for Robespierre's fall, 
have been guillotined. He had taught English to the 
Royal Family before 1789, and he was accused of asso- 
ciating with priests and receiving frequent letters from 
Calais. He latterly published English and Spanish 
lesson books, and died in 1804, aged seventy-nine. 
There were also Cresswell, Davies, Fox, Hickie, Boswell, 
Macdermott, who kept a school, Stubbs, who had a 
reading-room with such English newspapers as were 
allowed to enter France, and Roche, probably Hamilton 
Roche, teacher at the military school, whose son 
Eugenius became a journalist in London. There were 
also two maiden ladies named Haines, ultimately 
joined by a Mrs. Poppleton, who carried on a school. 
She was probably the wife or widow of George Popple- 
ton, who had taught English. There was likewise the 
daughter of a Scotsman named James Mather Flint, 
the widow of the clever but unprincipled anti-revolu- 
tionary pamphleteer Rivarol. Flint and his wife 
settled about 1734 in France, where their daughter 
Louisa in 1768 translated into French one of Shake- 
speare's plays with Dr. Johnson's notes,^ and Johnson 
wrote to her in French a letter of thanks, in which 
he humorously rallied her on detaining in Paris the 

^ Probably Letourneur's Edition. 



150 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

sister of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Fanny Reynolds had 
apparently gone to lodge with the Flints, for Northcote 
is incorrect in stating that Louisa accompanied her 
to France. Reynolds himself in the following year, 
when visiting Paris, called on the Flints. On the death 
of his wife, Flint, who had embraced Catholicism, 
entered the priesthood and received a small benefice 
which was supplemented by a pension of 200 francs from 
the General Assembly of the Clergy. This pension he 
enjoyed till the Revolution, and he must have died 
before 1793, for his daughter alone was then arrested 
as an Englishwoman. She had, it is true, in 1780 
married Rivarol and had given birth to a son, but 
Rivarol had long deserted her, leaving her and her 
infant in such distress that the Montyon prize, much 
to his mortification, was awarded in 1788 to a French- 
woman who had kindly succoured them. Madame 
Rivarol afterwards tried to maintain herself by transla- 
tions from the English. Her faithless husband died 
in Germany as an emigre in 1810, and her son Daniel 
was now serving till his death in 1810 in the Danish 
or Russian army. She herself survived till 1821. She 
is not likely to have been hunted up by any of her 
fellow-Britons in 1802 or 1814. 

Nor were political refugees likely to be sought by 
them, otherwise they might have made numerous ac- 
quaintances. Most of them were Irish, but King 
mentions two Englishmen, Ashley, an ex-member of 
the London Corresponding Society, who had a flourish- 
ing business in Paris, and ' Hodgson,' a hatter, either 
Richard Hodson, one of the Reformers prosecuted in 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPKESSIONS 151 

1794, or William Hodson, who in December 1793 in- 
curred twelve months' imprisonment and a fine of 
£200 for saying that the world would not be happy 
till there were no more kings. There was also one 
Scot, Robert Watson, who had crossed the Channel 
in 1798, secretary and biographer of Lord George 
Gordon, alleged teacher of English (but more pro- 
bably ' skimmer ' of English newspapers) to Napoleon, 
rescuer from rain and rats of the Stuart papers at 
Rome; his career was full of romance, and it ended 
in the tragedy of suicide at a London inn at the age 
of eighty-eight. As for the Irish, some had been 
long domiciled in France, while others had just been 
liberated under a secret article, or at least a secret 
understanding, of the Treaty of Amiens. They would, 
according to French documents, have been executed 
in Ireland but for the threat of reprisals against 
General Sir George Don, who, as will be explained here- 
after, had been arrested in France.^ These ex-prisoners 
included James Napper Tandy, given up by Hamburg, 
along with James Blackwell, Hervey Montmorency 
Morris, and Wm. Corbett, to Sir James Craufurd, but all 
claimed by Napoleon as French officers.^ Tandy landed 
at Bordeaux in March 1802, and died there in the follow- 
ing year, not having been allowed to go to Paris. In 
December 1802, describing himself as a French general, 
he sent a challenge to Elliott, an English M.P., who 
had spoken of him as an ' arch traitor,' and on Elliott 
taking no notice of his letter he denounced him as 

1 F. 7, 1672. 

2 Hamburg was fined four millions by Napoleon for this act. 



152 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

a coward.^ Morris, who had fought for Austria against 
the Turks before fighting for the French Revolution, after 
a visit to Paris returned to Ireland, but in 1811 rejoined 
the French army. Corbett had escaped from Kilmain- 
ham prison, an episode utilised by Miss Edgeworth in 
one of her stories. He, too, joined the French army, 
became a general, and later on helped to liberate 
Greece. Blackwell, who, a student in the Irish College, 
had joined in the attack on the Bastille, was penniless 
on now landing in France, and Napoleon first gave 
him 6000 francs and then a pension of 3000 francs 
'for his services to liberty,' Napoleon not having yet 
ceased to talk of liberty. In 1803 Blackwell com- 
manded Napoleon's Irish legion, Corbett serving under 
him, as also John Devereux,^ who, though a con- 
spirator of 1798, waited on Lord Whitworth with a 
letter of introduction from Lord Moira. He was per- 
mitted in 1819 to enlist recruits for Bolivar at Dublin, 
the British authorities being doubtless glad thus to 
get rid of restless spirits. He became a general in 
the service of Colombia, and in 1825 revisited Paris, 
where, as a 'most active and dangerous man,' his 
movements were suspiciously watched by detectives.^ 
Arthur O'Connor, nephew of Lord Longueville and 
ex-M.P. for Cork, has been already mentioned. He 
married Condorcet's daughter, and latterly devoted 
himself to agriculture and to his viUage mayoralty. 

1 Times, Februarjr 25, 1803. 

^ Kirwan in Fraser's Magazine, 1860 ; Fitzpatrick, Secret Service 
under Pitt. 

2 Ann6e, Livre Noir, 1829. 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 153 

He just lived to see the Frencli empire restored. 
Robert Emmet returned to Dublin in October 1802, 
and was executed for a fresh conspiracy. So also 
was Thomas Russell, who while a soldier in Ireland 
became acquainted with Tone and was won over to 
his views. Thomas Addis Emmet, Robert's brother, 
went in 1804 to New York, where he became a 
barrister. William James Macnevin likewise crossed 
the Atlantic. 

Other Irishmen had been or were now employed in 
the French civil service. Aherne, an ex-priest, had 
served under Delacroix or Carnot. Nicholas Madgett 
was in the Foreign Office under the Directory, as also 
a nephew, Sullivan, who had been a professor of mathe- 
matics at La Fleche and had gone with Hoche's ex- 
pedition to Ireland. 1 Edward Joseph Lewins, who had 
dubbed himself first Luines and then de Luynes, as 
though related to the French duke of that name, had 
been educated at the Irish College, Paris. Sent by 
the United Irishmen to France, he was employed by 
the Directory in missions and reports, and on the 
abandonment of French expeditions to Ireland he 
joined the Due de Larochefoucault-Liancourt in in- 
dustrial enterprises, to carry on which he applied for 
the reimbursement of his secret service expenses. 
Talleyrand endorsed this application.^ He was after- 
wards the soi-disant Thompson who, according to 
Goldsmith, was employed in opening English letters 
at the post-office, for he had been originally in the 

1 Dublin Review, April 1890. ^ F. 7, 1671. 



154 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Irish post-office. He subsequently had appointments 
in the Foreign and Education Offices. He was still 
living in Paris in 1824, but his son refused, doubtless 
for cogent reasons, to give any information on him 
to Madden for his history of the United Irishmen. 
William Duckett, one of the instigators of the mutiny 
of the Nore, had been employed by the diplomatic 
committee of the Convention, but eventually turned 
pedagogue. Patrick Lattin, so brilliant in conversa- 
tion, according to Lady Morgan, as to reduce Curran 
and Shell to silence, had served in the Franco-Irish 
brigade till 1791, and was in the carriage when 
Theobald Dillon was murdered by his troops at Lille 
in 1792. He had settled near Lyons, but occasion- 
ally visited Paris, where he died about 1849. But it 
is not always easy to distinguish him from another 
Lattin. John Fitzgerald, also a Franco-Irish officer, 
had emigrated at the Revolution but returned in 1802, 
and his dinners from 1823 to 1836 drew the best 
British and French company.^ William Putnam 
M'Cabe, one of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's bodyguard 
in 1798, was now starting a cotton mill near Rouen, 
but sold it in 1806 to Waddington. He had hair- 
breadth escapes from arrest on repeated visits to 
England and Ireland, and died in Paris in 1821. He 
had been intimate with Tone,^ the funeral of whose 
daughter Mira in March 1803 drew together all the 
Irish refugees. Tone's son had entered the French 

^ Fraser's Magazine, 1860. 

- W. T. Tone's autobiography appeared in a French review, the 
Garnet, in 1899. 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 155 

army, but after Waterloo went to America witli his 
mother, who then married an old Scottish friend, Hugh 
Wilson of Bordeaux. In 1803 she took out a patent 
for clarifying liquids. Wilson, after a roaming life, 
ended his days at Santa Cruz in 1829. 

The English, of course, found many foreigners in 
Paris, though except in the aggregate in much smaller 
numbers than themselves. The Russians were already 
noted for their prodigality. Swedes were tolerably 
numerous. The Germans were mostly economical. 
Among Americans were Rufus King, Livingston, Jay, 
the Ambassador at London, and the future president, 
Monroe. There was also Colonel James Swan, a native 
of Dunfermline, but one of the ' Boston tea-party,' 
whose contracts with the French Government had in- 
volved him in litigation with his partner Schweizer, 
and who, rather than meet what he considered an 
unjust claim, was to undergo twenty-two years' im- 
prisonment in a Paris debtors' prison.^ Count Rum- 
ford, the inventor, now likewise settled in Paris.^ The 
visitor of highest rank was the Prince of Orange, 
afterwards suitor to our Princess Charlotte and ulti- 
mately King of Holland. His father had sent him 
from London to claim an indemnity for the loss 
of the statthalterate, and he appears to have suc- 
ceeded in his mission, Charlotte's eventually success- 
ful suitor, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, also visited Paris, 
but not till 1810, when he offered, it is said, to be 

1 Atlantic Monthly, September 1890. His tomb at P^re Lachaise is 
no longer discoverable. 

^ Atlantic Monthly, February 1893. 



156 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

aide-de-camp to Napoleon. Higher destinies awaited 
him. The Russians and Poles included Count Zamoiski, 
Count Potocki, Prince Troubetski, Prince Galitzin, and 
Princess Demidoff, an accomplished dancer. Nor should 
we forget Kosciusko, who had failed to liberate Poland. 
Shepherd found him in a cottage near the barriers, 
with a small garden which he cultivated himself. He 
must have been able to relate Polish imitations of the 
French Revolution — a massacre of prisoners, a revolu- 
tionary tribunal, pillages, and confiscations ; but he 
could claim credit for Stanislas having been honour- 
ably treated as a captive, in lieu of having been exe- 
cuted like Louis xvi. Possibly a South American youth, 
Bolivar, the future Liberator, made his acquaintance. 
There was also Madame de Krudener, the Delphine 
of Madame de Stael's story, now famous for her beauty 
and her gallantries, not yet for the mysticism which 
was to captivate the Tsar Alexander and the Queen of 
Prussia. She was at this time enamoured of the 
singer Garat, but was shortly to accompany her sick 
husband who, before reaching Aix, his destination, died 
of apoplexy. Madame de Stael herself, described in 
a police note as known for her love of intrigue, was 
not yet banished from the capital outside which she 
was miserable, and there was her satellite, Benjamin 
Constant, not yet much known, though he had been 
arrested in 1796 for declaring that France needed a 
king. A fellow Swiss visitor, was Pestalozzi, the edu- 
cationist, noted by the police as having an English 
pension. Another educationist was the German Campe, 
who in 1792, along with Cloots, Paine, Priestley, and 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 157 

otliers, had received French citizenship. He was sur- 
prised to find the Parisians taciturn and apathetic, 
instead of being lively, talkative, and enthusiastic as 
in 1792. Science was represented by Oersted, who, 
however, was as yet merely a youth who had gained 
a travelling scholarship. 

Alexander Humboldt did not arrive from South 
America till 1804, but his brother William, statesman 
and philologist, was spending three years in Paris. 
Germany also sent the Landgrave of Hesse Rothen- 
burg and Princess HohenzoUern, the latter anxious to 
purchase the field in which her guillotined brother, 
Prince Salm Kyrburg, had been buried. Prince 
Emanuel of Salm, apparently her uncle, accompanied 
her on her pious mission. Adam Gottlob von Moltke, 
a cousin of the famous strategist and like him a Dane, 
was a versifier of the Klopstock school and was in- 
timate with Niebuhr. On the outbreak of the French 
Revolution he had styled himself Citizen Moltke. 
He helped to draw up the Schleswig-Holstein con- 
stitution. Another Danish visitor was Baggesen, who 
had witnessed the Revolution, imitated Klopstock and 
Wieland, and enjoyed a pension from his sovereign. 
Samson Heine, father of the poet, a Dusseldorf mer- 
chant, was a visitor on business, like several of his 
Jewish co-religionists. His son was too young to 
accompany him. Another business visitor was Johann 
Maria Farina, who opened depots for his ' veritable 
eau de Cologne.' Frederic Jacobi, a friend of Richter, 
went in vain quest of health. He revived his ac- 
quaintance with Count Schlabrendorf, whom he had 



158 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

met in London in 1786. 'For eight years,' said Schla- 
brendorf, reviewing his revolutionary experiences, 'it 
was here all a scuffle like a village beershop, every- 
body pitching into each other. Then came Bonaparte 
with a "stop that." The first thing he did was to 
blow out the candles. He wanted no questions settled, 
but merely the stoppage of disputes. Liberty or no 
liberty, religion or no religion, morality or no morality, 
was all immaterial to him. Liberty and equality re- 
main, and now nobody opens his mouth or strikes 
another.' I may here remark that the comparison of 
Bonaparte to Cromwell, obvious as it now appears to 
us, was not made by any English observer, though 
it did not escape German visitors. Jacobi also went 
to see St. Martin, the disciple of Boehme and Sweden- 
borg, who had known William Law in England in 
1787, and regarded the French Revolution as a pre- 
cursor of the Day of Judgment. St. Martin, who was 
living in seclusion till his death in October 1803, said 
to him, ' Everybody has told you I am mad, but you 
see that I am at least a happy madman. If, more- 
over, some madmen should be fettered there are others 
to be left unfettered, and I think myself one of the 
latter.' A disciple of Jacobi, Jacob Frederic Fries, 
who had been educated by the Moravians and was 
ultimately a professor at Jena, was also a visitor. His 
democratic opinions for a time occasioned his sus- 
pension from his post. Frederic Schlegel, an intimate 
friend of Novalis, studied at the Louvre, was taught 
Sanscrit by Alexander Hamilton, and lectured on 
German literature and philosophy. He and his Jewish 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 159 

wife, a daughter of Moses Mendelssolan, embraced 
Catholicism in 1803. Less eminent than his brother 
Augustus, he was an orientaKst and art critic. Living 
with them at Montmartre was Helmine von Klenke, 
who had made an unfortunate marriage with Baron 
Hastier, and having divorced him was destined 
to be but little more successful with a second mate, 
Chezy, to whom Schlegel, his teacher of Persian, in- 
troduced her. Helmine was cured of a violent head- 
ache by Mesmer, who sat beside her at dinner, and 
unobserved by the other guests made some passes 
over her forehead. Mesmer, unlike what happened to 
him in 1781 and 1785, attracted no curiosity. Helmine 
also met Hardenberg, the future Prussian statesman, 
Achim von Arnim, a poet and novelist, and Made- 
moiselle Rodde, daughter of a Swiss professor, and 
herself at seventeen adorned with a doctor's degree.^ 
Reichardt, the composer, and Fabricius, the Danish 
naturalist, should also be mentioned. Dietrich Heinrich 
von Billow, who had twice visited America, had there 
embraced Swedenborgianism, had been ruined by a 
glass speculation, and was now dependent on his pen, 
likewise visited Paris. An admirer of Napoleon, this 
historian and pamphleteer had had adventures, and 
was destined to have others. Juhus von Voss, poet 
and novelist, was another visitor. 

Last but not least among the German visitors comes 
Schopenhauer. His father, Henry Florian Schopen- 
hauer, a Hamburg merchant, with his wife and son, 
went to London in July 1802. Leaving Arthur at 

^ Helmine von Chezy, Unvergessenes. 



160 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

school with the Rev. Thomas Lancaster at Wimbledon, 
the parents travelled about England and Scotland. 
They got back to London in October, and after a six 
weeks' stay all three embarked for Rotterdam. Mercier, 
the prolific writer, showed them the sights of Paris. 
In January 1803 they proceeded to Bordeaux. Thence 
father and son returned to Hamburg, while the mother 
went to Toulouse, Toulon, Hyeres, and Switzerland, 
an account of which trip she published. Pecuniary 
losses affected the father's mind, and in 1805, at the 
age of fifty-nine, he fell or threw himself into a 
canal. Griesbach denies that he committed suicide, 
alleging that he slipped through a trap-door in his 
warehouse into the canal. He was an habitual reader 
of the Tivies, a taste inherited by his son. 

The Italians include Bartolini, sculptor of a colossal 
bust of Napoleon, and a daughter of Beccaria, the 
Italian philosopher, who had inherited his intelligence 
and love of liberty, and possessed beauty into the 
bargain. She had divorced her insane husband. Helen 
Williams in 1794-1795 had found her residing by the 
lake of Lugano. She seems to have settled in Paris 
in 1798, and Paine then made acquaintance with her. 
She presented Redhead Yorke with a portrait of her 
father, and Holcroft was now struck by her intelligence 
and affability. At her house he met Melzi, who had 
presented the keys of Milan to Napoleon on his enter- 
ing that city, and who had scandalised lovers of liberty 
by accepting the vice-presidency of the so-called Cis- 
alpine republic, though Napoleon soon superseded him 
by his step-son Eugene de Beauharnais. Another well- 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 161 

known Italian, though born in Paris, was Caraccioli, 
the author of Pope Ganganelli's Letters and many- 
other works; but he was an octogenarian and died 
in 1803. Then there was Casti, canon and poet, an 
imitator of Boccaccio. Prince Jerome Moliterno Pigna- 
telli had figured in NeapoHtan poHtics, and was now 
conspiring to deliver the Neapolitan ports to England. 
Though Merry granted him a passport he was stopped 
at Calais and incarcerated in the Temple, along with 
his English wife or mistress, a Mrs. Dorinda Newnham, 
an Irishwoman,^ possibly the wife of a London alder- 
man and ex-M.P. She was again arrested at Rome in 
1809, but liberated as being both ill and mad. It was 
thought, however, that she had been forewarned of 
arrest and had burnt her papers.^ Ultimately both 
of them got to England. 

How did the English demef.n themselves and what 
was the impression produced on both sides ? Francis 
Jackson, writing on 2nd February 1802 to Speaker 
Abbot, says : — 

' I only wish you would extend the efforts of your police 
to keep at home a parcel of disorderly women who come 
abroad without bringing anything with them that does 
credit to the national character. There is Lady C (Chol- 
mondeley), who is one day taken up by the police and carried 
to the chief lock-up for persisting to drive in the Champs 
Elys^es at forbidden hours and through forbidden roads. 
Another day she quarrels with people at the masquerade. 
A third she invites a dozen Frenchmen and women to her 



^ She pretended, however, to be Dorinda Rogers, an American. 
2 A. F. iv. 1496 and 1498. 



162 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

house and abuses them all for slaves. Then we have 
Lady M. (Monck), whose dear friend would welcome H, M. 
Williams and who gets into all the bad company in Paris. 
You must suppose it is very bad when here it is reckoned 
mauvais ton. You really should keep these people at home. 
As for your swindlers, of whom there has been a nest here 
for some time, they are not near so troublesome, for there 
are swindlers in all countries and the police here is very 
good.' ^ 

There is evidently a little exaggeration here, but we 
have already seen that Lord Whitworth shut his doors 
against some of his countrymen whose inordinate 
admiration of Napoleon was not conducive to the 
maintenance of peace, since it must have given the 
impression that there was a strong French party in 
England, so that Napoleon might dictate his own 
terms, Whitworth acknowledged that the Duke of 
Bedford, fully alive to Napoleon's projects, conducted 
^ himself very properly, adding, ' I wish I could say as 

much of many of my countrymen and countrywomen.'^ 
Lady Oxford even considered Napoleon handsome — 
an opinion, says a royalist spy, not shared by a single 
Frenchwoman. The Duchess of Gordon, though 
another of his admirers — pointing to his portrait she 
would say to the wife of Consul Lebrun, ' Voila mon 
zero (heros)' — went rather beyond the bounds of 
politeness when, seated between Berthier and Decres,^ 
Ministers of War and Marine, she said, ' I am always 

^ Lord Colchester, Letters. King speaks of the swarm of English 
bankrupts and sharpers at Calais and Boulogne. 
- Oscar Browning, England and Napoleon in 1803. 
2 Brother to Madame de Genlis. 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 163 

frightened when I look at you (Berthier), but fortunately 
you (turning to Decres) reassure me.' ^ This, however, 
might pass for one of her usual sallies, intimating that 
the French army was formidable, but not the navy. 
Yet Thibaudeau says : — 

' Paris was infatuated with the arrival of these foreigners. 
It was a scramble among all classes to give them the best 
reception. It was the height of fashion to dine and amuse 
them and give them balls ; the women especially were 
enamoured of the English and had a rage for their fashions. 
In short France seemed to eclipse itself before a few 
thousands of these proud and unprofitable foreigners, to- 
wards whom the attentions of hospitality were carried to 
a ridiculous excess. Frenchmen of the old school did not 
share this intoxication, but sighed over this forgetfulness 
of national dignity.' ^ 

And Reichardt speaks of French fops parading 
English garments, horses, and dogs. Even Napoleon, 
he says, sent to England for horses and hounds. 
Frenchmen, with their keen sense of the ludicrous, 
were amused, he tells us, with the middle-class English- 
man, who had never previously visited Paris. Carica- 
turists depicted him standing open-mouthed in front 
of public buildings, with the wife in insular toilette 
or grotesquely aping French fashions. A short play 
entitled I' Anglais a Paris, which was apparently never 
printed, doubtless made good-humoured fun of the 
visitors. 



^ Remade, Bonaparte et les Bourbons. 
2 Thibaudeau, Mdmoires. 



164 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

At a theatre two of these were once so unceremonious 
as to take off their coats on a hot July night, where- 
upon there was a scene. They were obdurate, alleging 
that this was allowable in London," until a police 
inspector arrived and expostulated with them. Their 
habit of carrying umbrellas and their nankeen or black 
gaiters were, however, adopted by the French, but their 
beverages probably found less favour, albeit an English 
tea-warehouse had been opened, as also a beershop 
which boasted of its aile (sic) as especially suitable for 
cool or damp weather. 

Vernet drew a caricature of the Duchess of Gordon 
as a stout woman holding her daughter by the hand. 
There were other family parties. ' English women,' 
says the Journal des D^bats (Sept. 1, 1802), 'are 
readily to be distinguished. If their grave and becom- 
ing demeanour were not sufficiently marked, the group 
of children accompanjdng them would be more than 
enough to show the difference between them and 
Parisian ladies.' Although tradesmen were glad to 
see English customers, they missed the extravagant 
milords of old times. The Cholmondeleys, indeed, 
had astonished Calais by their lavishness, requiring 
five-and-twenty horses for their coaches to Paris, 
where they were doubtless equally prodigal, and Lord 
Aberdeen was also lavish ; but most of the visitors 
haggled about prices, bought only cheap goods, and 
frequented cheap restaurants. Even rich nabobs seemed 
bent on spending as little as possible. A royalist 
agent, while remarking that all Europe was infected 
with the enthusiasm for Bonaparte and hastened 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 165 

to Paris to behold the great man at least once, 
says : — 

* It is easy to see that curiosity alone attracts foreigners, 
especially the English. The proof is that they never make 
a long stay among us. They come to see the First Consul, 
attend the parade and theatres, visit the museums and other 
curiosities ; then they leave. Paris is thus for foreigners 
merely a huge inn, where they come to examine the con- 
sequences of the Revolution and admire the masterpieces 
stolen from Italy and Flanders.' ^ 

This is corroborated by a Weimar magazine, London 
und Paris, which speaks of the wealthiest visitors as 
apparently resolved on economising, beating down 
shopkeepers and chiefly frequenting the museums 
and other gratuitous spectacles, or gaping from 
morning to night in the squares and on the bridges. 
Campe speaks of a fortnight as the average stay, and 
accepting the obviously exaggerated calculation of a 
Paris newspaper that there were 32,000 English arrivals 
a month, he estimated that each spent 30 guineas 
and that Paris was the richer by 960,000 guineas a 
month. Reichardt estimated 20 guineas as the cost 
of the journey and of ten days' stay in Paris. 

As for English impressions of France a few words 
will suffice. Most of the ' chiels ' who took notes were 
struck with the liveliness of French society. The 
absence of roughness and hustling in the crowds at 
fireworks and regattas also then, as now,- attracted 
notice. Eyre speaks of the readiness with which 

^ Remade, p. 93. 



166 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Parisian crowds made way for foreigners. On the 
other hand, the frequency of divorce and of liaisons 
excited comment. King speaks of obscenity, immor- 
ahty, and profligacy as universal in Paris, a remark 
which we might attribute to British cant but for his 
statement that he also saw drunken Englishmen reeling 
in the Palais Royal arcades. The term monsieur had 
been generally revived, though in the public offices 
citoyen was still retained. Madame Recamier showed 
visitors of both sexes her sumptuously furnished bed- 
room. Pinkerton and Hughes were charmed with 
the affability and grace of Frenchwomen, and Williams 
wished France and England could bestow on each other 
the one gaiety the other seriousness, while Miss Plump- 
tree vindicated the virtue of the great majority of 
Frenchwomen. Miss Edge worth was struck by the 
absence of beggars on the coach-roads — in Paris, how- 
ever, carriages were beset by them — and by the good 
manners of the lower orders. Forbes found the coach- 
drivers so polite as to stop and allow their fair pass- 
engers to sketch the landscape. Eyre was delighted 
with the Palais Royal, whereas Redhead Yorke styles 
it a den of iniquity, and Miss Plumptree considered its 
erection a greater sin of Egalite Orleans than even his 
Jacobinical delinquencies. 

Holcroft, who had a French wife and had paid 
previous visits, tells us more than other writers of 
comparative manners. He himself was taught a lesson 
of politeness. He was leaning against the mantelpiece 
apparently monopolising the fire, when a girl came up 
and in lieu of saying ' You are in my way,' employed 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 167 

the delicate periphrasis of 'I am in your way,' He 
took the hint and moved, but this was not all. She 
touched a cup and saucer on the mantelpiece, expecting 
him to remove it. He did not perceive her meaning, 
whereupon she took the cup and saucer and handed 
it to him. Again when a friend was lolling in a chair 
with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched 
out, a French lady remarked to Mrs. Holcroft, ' Look 
at that Englishman, he is anything but squeamish.' 
Yet Holcroft saw Frenchmen in similar attitudes, not 
to speak of their spitting on the floor or pulling out 
white handkerchiefs bedaubed with snuff. The French 
were scandalised at the appearance at the Tuileries of 
an officer in Highland costume ; but Holcroft observed 
women in male attire in the streets and also at the 
theatres, where they thus evaded the regulation exclud- 
ing women from the pit. He saw a married couple undis- 
tinguishable in point of dress, but he admits that the 
woman showed timidity and the utmost propriety. On 
another occasion, however, he sat behind a girl in male 
dress who, manifestly to attract his notice, pretended 
to be making love to a female friend by her side. 
Little girls, moreover, were frequently dressed as boys, 
while boys had all sorts of outlandish costumes. 
Naughty children were often threatened with being 
sent back to their nurses on the ground that they must 
be changelings, and putting children out to nurse 
was so universal that in eighteen months Holcroft, 
except among the poor, saw only two infants in arms 
in the streets. He found French politeness in several 
respects wanting. Shopkeepers were the reverse of 



168 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

obsequious, and when his heels were trodden upon or 
his coat soiled by a cane or umbrella carried under 
the arm he seldom received an apology. If, more- 
over, at a theatre a neighbour borrowed his copy of 
the play it would have been retained till the end 
of the performance if Holcroft had not asked for it 
back. 

There were marriages and deaths among the visitors. 
Lady Catherine Beauclerk, daughter of the Duke of 
St. Albans, was married at the Embassy to the Rev. 
James Burgess, the Duchess of Cumberland being 
present ; she died nine months afterwards at Florence. 
The Baroness Crofton's daughter was married to 
St. George Caulfeild of the county Roscommon, 
probably the ex-Guardsman and man of fashion who 
on the 2nd February 1803 appeared at Co vent Garden 
as Hamlet. He was 'well-proportioned and genteel,' 
but too laboured in his attitudes and gesticulations. 
Richard Trench married Miss St. George. Lady Isabel 
Style died at St. Omer in December 1802, Champion 
de Crespigny in Paris on New Year's Day, 1803, and 
Luttrell in the same month. Sir Robert Chambers, 
ex-Chief Justice of Bengal, who had intended going 
south, died in Paris in May 1803, and was buried in the 
Temple Church, London. Mrs. Charles Ellis, grand- 
daughter of the Earl of Bristol, Lady Mary Eyre, relict 
of Thomas Eyre and sister of the Earl of Uxbridge, 
Lady Anne Saltmarsh, and Colonel Alexander Malcolm 
also died in Paris or the provinces. 

Before passing on to the renewal of the war, I may 
mention some of the return visits to London. These 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 169 

were sufficiently numerous for sheets of voting-papers on 
Napoleon's life-consulate to be sent over to the French 
Embassy. Let us hope that one of these was not filled 
up by the most prominent visitor, Gregoire, Con- 
stitutional Bishop of Blois, who had sat in the Con- 
vention, but was happily absent in Savoy at the 
time of Louis xvi.'s trial. He was no doubt eagerly 
questioned on the events of the Revolution and on 
the horrors from which he had rather unaccountably 
escaped. He plumed himself on being the first 
Catholic prelate who since 1688 had promenaded in 
St. James's Park in full costume, and he wittily 
remarked to Fulton, ' The English are a magnanimous, 
hospitable, and kindly people, and the country would 
be enchanting if it had but pleased God to give 
it sunshine and French cookery.' Sir Joseph Banks 
showed him the sights of London. Madame Recamier 
was welcomed at London and Bath. She was noticed 
by the Prince of Wales, and made or renewed acquaint- 
ance with the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Elizabeth 
Foster, the Marquis of Douglas, his sister the Duchess 
of Somerset, the Duke of Orleans (afterwards Louis 
Philippe), and his brothers. Her portrait was in great 
request, but she was mobbed in Kensington Gardens 
on account of her transparent French costume.^ Her 
husband, the banker, joined her in London in May 
1802. Madame Vigee-Lebrun, who had painted Marie 

^ Some French ladies, who were disagreeably crowded by public 
curiosity in Kensington Gardens, complained heavily of our want of 
politesse. They should remember, however, that they were not quite 
undressed in the fashion, and that the English ladies always walk out 



170 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Antoinette, went in April 1802 and stayed three years. 
The Prince of Wales and Lord Byron were among her 
sitters, Madame Tussaud, an artist of another order, 
settled permanently in London with her waxwork col- 
lections. Delille recited his verses, but was addicted 
to eating jellies meanwhile, which with his rapid pace 
made it difficult to understand him. He returned in 
August 1802, and had obtained or was about to obtain 
dispensation from deacon's orders so as to marry his 
housekeeper. Garnerin, the aeronaut, made a long 
stay, and ascending at Ranelagh Gardens alighted at 
Colchester. He made another ascent at Bath. Felis- 
sent, the worthless second husband of the great singer 
Mrs. Billington, had to her surprise followed her from 
Italy to London; but the Government, doubtless out 
of friendliness to her, expelled him under the Alien 
Act. Was he anxious to share the 4000 guineas which 
she was earning that season, or was he jealous, and 
not without cause, of the Duke of Sussex ? Talleyrand 
shamelessly gave his brother, Colonel Archambaud 
(afterwards Due de Talleyrand), a letter to the Prime 
Minister, Addington, requesting him to procure the 
payment of a considerable sum due to him while 
commanding a regiment of emigres in English pay. 
Archambaud returned with the money, but the London 
newspapers revealing his incognito mission, Napoleon 
banished him from Paris, as also another Bozon, who 
had likewise fought against France but had since 
cringed to Napoleon. Fievee, the press censor, was 

with something upon their heads, however they treat the rest of their 
persons. — Times, April 19, 1803. 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 171 

sent to write letters on or rather against England in 
the Merciire de France^ as also Colonel Beauvoisin, 
who on his return was ordered by Napoleon to write 
against Pitt, GrenviUe, and the Court. He was sent on 
a second visit with directions not only to write letters 
to his paper (apparently the JDebats), and to send all 
anti-French pamphlets, but to 'find pretexts for tra- 
versing the whole coast from the Thames to beyond 
Plymouth, the Bristol Channel, Edinburgh and the 
Scotch coasts.' He was to 'have a fixed salary, and 
extra pay whenever he answers the expectations formed 
of his talents and fidelity.' ^ Beauvoisin, according to 
Goldsmith, was intimate with Despard, the conspirator. 
Bonnecarrere, Madame Bonneuil, who had previously 
had a mission to Russia, Madame Visconti, mistress of 
General Berthier, and Madame Gay, are also mentioned 
by Goldsmith as Napoleon's emissaries. Military men 
were also appointed by him as consuls at London, 
Bristol, Hull, Glasgow, Dublin, Cork, and Jersey; but 
a letter from Talleyrand to Fauvelet at Dublin, instruct- 
ing him to make plans of Irish harbours, was inter- 
cepted, whereupon the English Government insisted on 
the withdrawal of these spies, a demand the more easily 
made by it as it had not itself appointed any consuls 
to France. A more legitimate visitor was Coquebert, 
a scientist and diplomatist who was deputed to discuss 
a commercial treaty, but failed to effect an agreement. 

^ Holcroft was told by a French lady, who sent for him to make 
this confidence and received him in her bath, that Fievee was commis- 
sioned to bribe London newspapers {Travels from Hamburg to Paris). 
Holcroft believed that the mission was unsuccessful. 

^ Napoleon, Gorrespondance. 



172 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Some of the visitors were of an undesirable class, for 
in September 1803, when a royal proclamation ordered 
a general expulsion, the Times said : — 

' What did France send to us ? With the exception of a 
few persons who came on commercial speculations, she sent 
a multitude of adventurers, who were starving at home and 
hastened hither, impelled by the reports of our riches and 
the simplicity of our character ; and in return for the wealth 
which our nobility and gentry carried over to their country, 
they came among us with no other possessions than their 
vices,' 

Shall we reckon among French visitors Maurice 
Drummond, a descendant of the Jacobite Drummonds, 
who took over with him his wife, daughter of Lord 
Elphinstone, and his daughter Clementina, destined 
as Lady Clementina Davies to write Recollections of 
Society ? She went at Edinburgh to a school kept by 
the sister of Professor Playfair, and her brother was 
born in 1807 on British soil. The latter, in 1841, 
proved his right to the French title of Duke of 
Melfort and Perth, while in 1853 an Act of Parliament, 
reversing the attainder, restored to him his ancestral 
British title of Earl of Perth and Melfort. He sur- 
vived till 1902, when, his son and grandson having 
predeceased him, the earldom passed to Viscount 
Strathallan. 

A less doubtful British immigrant was John Gamble, 
probably brother of the James Gamble who witnessed 
the Revolution. He had been in partnership as a 
paper-maker at Essonne with Jules Didot St. Leger, 



AMUSEMENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 173 

who had married his sister Maria.^ Accompanied by 
Nicolas Louis Robert, the Essonne overseer, inventor 
of a machine for endless paper-making, he started 
paper-mills in 1804 at Frogmore, Herts, but these did 
not succeed. Didot himself, however, was more fortu- 
nate at Two Waters, Hemel Hempstead, where he 
remained from 1802 till 1816. 

^ See my Englishmen in the French Revolution and Paris in 1789-94. 



IV 
CAPTIVITY 

The Rupture — Detentions — Flights and Narrow Escapes — Life 
at Verdun — Extortion — Napoleon's Rigour — M.P.'s — The Argus 
— Escapes and Recaptures — Diplomatists — Liberations — Indul- 
gences — Women and Children — Captures in War — Rumbold — 
Foreign Visitors — British Travellers — Deaths — The Last Stage 
— French Leave — Unpaid Debts. 

It is not my purpose to discuss the causes of the 
renewal of the war. M. Martin Phippson, in the Revue 
Historique, March to June 1901, contends that though 
England, owing to Addington's incapacity, was seem- 
ingly the aggressor, Napoleon was really so, albeit 
desirous at the last moment of postponing the rupture 
till his armaments were completed. Of all the ex- 
planations of the rupture the strangest, yet the most 
recent, is that of M. Albert Sorel, who, quoting some 
anonymous English writer, represents the renewal of 
the war as necessary to the English ruling classes in 
order to avert the establishment of a government like 
the French.^ The truth is that all reflecting English- 
men perceived Napoleon to be a tyrant, and Paine, as 
we have seen, regarded Frenchmen as worse off than 
the slaves of Constantinople. 

1 E6vue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1, 1902, p. 115. 

174 



CAPTIVITY 175 

The treaty of Amiens, moreover, had never been 
more than a truce, Whitworth had never appeared 
to instal himself for a permanency, and EngHsh visitors 
consequently complained of his want of hospitality. 
On the 13th March 1803 Napoleon rudely apostro- 
phised him at Josephine's reception, Whitworth's 
own account of this has been published by Mr. 
Oscar Browning, but Napoleon's version addressed to 
Andreossi, which seems to have been overlooked in 
England, is to be found in his correspondence. It 
reads thus : — 

' The First Consul being at the presentation of foreigners 
which took place to-day at Madame Bonaparte's, and find- 
ing Lord Whitworth and M. de Markoff side by side, said 
to them, "We have been fighting fifteen years (sic). It 
seems that a storm is brewing at London, and that they 
want to fight another fifteen years. The King of England 
says in his message that France is preparing ofi'ensive 
armaments. He has been misled. There is no considerable 
armament in the French ports, all having started for St. 
Domingo. He says that differences exist between the two 
Cabinets ; I know of none. It is true that England should 
evacuate Malta. His Majesty is pledged to this by treaty. 
The French nation may be destroyed but not intimidated." 

' Going round and finding himself alone with M. de Markoff, 
he said in a low tone that the discussion related to Malta, 
that the British Ministry wanted to keep it seven years, 
and that you should not sign treaties when you would not 
execute them. At the end of the circle, the English minister 
being near the door, he said to him : " Madame Dorset has 
spent the bad season at Paris ; I ardently hope that she may 
spend the fine one ; but if it is true that we are to have war, 
the entire responsibility in the eyes of God and man will be 



176 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

on those who repudiate their own signature and refuse to 
execute treaties." ' 

This storm blew over, and on the 30th March the 
young Duke of Dorset, the Harrow schoolboy, set off 
to spend Easter with his mother, his two little sisters, 
and his step-father at Paris. It was also stated that 
the Embassy was about to be newly furnished. But 
in April matters again looked threatening. Madame 
de Remusat tells us that people collected outside the 
British Embassy, to judge by the preparations for 
departure whether there was to be peace or war. 
Whitworth^ left Paris on the 12th May and landed 
at Dover on the 20th. His staff met with some 
obstacles. Talbot, on his way to Calais, was stopped 
at St. Denis because his passport had expired. He 
acknowledged that he ought to have renewed it, but 
the Prefect of Police, on being consulted, said he was 
exempt from the decree, and after a few hours' delay 
Talbot, who admitted that he had been courteously 
treated, proceeded on his journey.^ Mandeville not 
being allowed, probably for the same informality, to 
embark at Calais, returned temporarily to Paris. 
Hodgson, the chaplain, and Maclaurin, the physician 
to the Embassy, also encountered difficulties. On the 
6th May it had been announced in the House of 
Commons that Andreossi had asked for his passports. 
On the I7th messages to both Houses and a notifica- 
tion in the London Gazette dated the 16th announced 

^ A police note charges him with having transmitted letters to and 
from 6migrds. 
2 A. F. iv. 1327. 



CAPTIVITY 177 

an embargo on all French and Dutch vessels in British 
ports, together with the issue of letters of marque. 
On the 19th two French vessels laden with timber and 
salt were captured off Brest. On the 23rd a decree 
was communicated to the French Chambers providing 
that all Englishmen enrolled in the militia or holding 
commissions in the army or navy should be detained 
as reprisals for this embargo and capture prior to the 
declaration of war on the 18th. The decree was even 
extended by being made applicable to all persons 
between eighteen and sixty, even if, like clergymen 
and others, not enrolled in the militia. Talbot before 
leaving wrote a letter of remonstrance to Talleyrand, 
who stated that Talbot having no longer any official 
status he could not reply. 

The only precedents for this detention were the 
arrest in 1746, without any apparent reason, of all the 
English in Paris on the return of the Young Pretender, 
and that of all Englishmen in France in 1793 as 
hostages for Toulon. Thomas Moore heard Lord 
Holland in 1819 justify Napoleon, but Mackintosh 
maintained that the seizure of vessels was warranted 
by international law, and a French jurist, Miot de 
Melito, describes the detention as a 'violent measure 
unusual even in the bitterest wars,' while Henri Martin, 
the French historian, charges both Governments with 
having violated international law. The truth is that 
Napoleon acted in a passion, and as in the case of 
the Due d'Enghien was too proud ever to acknowledge 
a mistake. As to an embargo, he himself as early 
as the 13th May had despatched orders for the seizure 

M 



178 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

of Britisli vessels in Holland, Genoa, and Tuscany. If, 
moreover, we are to believe Madame Junot, Napoleon's 
decree was due to his having been informed that Colonel 
James Green had in a cafe threatened in his cups to 
assassinate him, and though Junot, being acquainted 
with Green, vouched for his having left Paris prior to 
the date of the alleged threat, Napoleon refused to 
cancel the decree. So swiftly was it enforced that 
the Prince of Wales packet and the cutter Nancy, 
which had made their usual passage from Dover to 
Calais, were seized and their crews detained. When 
a few weeks afterwards Napoleon visited Calais, Captain 
Sutton, of the Prince of Wales, petitioned him for 
release, but he met with a peremptory refusal, and 
Napoleon, on the two vessels being pointed out to 
him in the harbour, said, 'You have plenty of mud 
there ; let them lie and rot.' 

The aggregate number of the British captives, repre- 
sented by the French as seven thousand five hundred, 
was really only seven hundred, four hundred of them, 
according to Sturt, being small tradesmen. Napoleon, 
according to Maclean, was much disappointed at the 
smallness of the haul. Everything indeed had been 
done to induce the visitors to stay. The Argus had 
on the 10th May remonstrated against any fear of 
detention as in 1793, France, it said, being no longer 
under a Robespierre, and provincial authorities had 
given assurances that expulsion with reasonable notice 
was the worst that could befall. It was unfair, 
however, to accuse Napoleon of having 'enticed' the 
English to remain. His assurances of safety were 



CAPTIVITY 179 

probably sincere at the time, but his moral sense did 
not impress upon him the sacredness of such a virtual 
pledge. He had no scruples as to suddenly changing 
his mind to the detriment of persons who had trusted 
him. Most of the visitors, however, had deemed it 
prudent to return home while the issue was still 
uncertain. As late indeed as May arrivals in Paris 
had continued. From May 10th to 19th there were 
48, and from the 20th to the 29th there were 38, but 
in the next ten days the number fell to 17 and in the 
following ten days to 6. Most of these visitors, more- 
over, must have come up from the provinces on their 
way home, while others came to fetch relatives. There 
were some narrow escapes. Sir William Call was just 
in time to leave Geneva, and Miss Berry and Mrs. 
Darner, warned by Lord John Campbell, hurried away 
from that city, forgetting or possibly not thinking it 
safe to pass on the warning to others. The Duke 
of Bedford, the Duchess of Gordon and her daughter, 
and Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh left Paris four days 
after Whitworth, The son of Sir G. Burrell and a 
companion escaped by making their valet pass for 
an American and themselves for his servants. Young 
Edgeworth, on the other hand, received his father's 
letter of warning just too late, and was detained till 
1814, though his companions, Roget as a Swiss and the 
Philips boys as below the age, obtained exemption. 
Yet not only had men been detained when over sixty, 
but some youths of ten or twelve, and therefore well 
under the limit of sixteen, had been stopped on the plea 
of their producing no certificates of birth. Augustine 



180 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Sayer, aged thirteen, whom his parents had apparently 
placed in a school, was not allowed to return home, but 
was forced to maintain himself by tuition. He was 
eventually physician to the Duke of Kent and to the 
Lock Hospital, dying in 1861. He may have been one 
of the English boys sent to Dubufe's school, for Dubufe, 
a member of the London Society of Arts, contradicting 
a statement that Protestants were refused admission 
to French schools, mentioned that he had received 
such pupils. John Charles Tarver, the future educa- 
tionist and teacher of French at Eton, might surely, 
however, have been sent to his parents in London 
between 1794 and 1802, even if this was impossible 
after 1803. Farel, the engineer, in whose care he had 
been left by them on their release from captivity at 
Dieppe after the Terror, had virtually adopted him. 
Born at Dieppe in 1790, he had practically been 
naturahsed, and Farel in 1805 got him into the 
French civil service. He remained in it till March 
1814, when, obtaining leave of absence, he went to 
London and found his mother, brothers, and sisters 
still living; but he returned to France during the 
Hundred Days, intending apparently to resume his 
official post. Disappointed in this hope, he recrossed 
the Channel and found a more distinguished career 
open to him. 

Before entering into details respecting the captives, I 
should speak of the unusual bitterness given to the war 
by Napoleon. Anglophobia, indeed, had been displayed 
by him even during the peace. The publishers of the 
Almanack National were sharply rebuked for proposing 



CAPTIVITY 181 

to insert 'Angieterre ' with its royal family at the head 
of the alphabetical list of foreign powers. They had 
to relegate it lower down as ' Grande Bretagne,' and 
curiously enough British representatives at inter- 
national Congresses are to the present day seated accord- 
ing to this nomenclature. Napoleon, moreover, during 
his tour in Normandy scolded his minister Chaptal 
for speaking of 'jardins anglais.' 'Why,' he vehe- 
mently exclaimed, ' do you call them English gardens ? 
Do you not know that this style of gardening came 
to us from China, that it was brought to perfection 
in France, and that no good Frenchman can credit 
England with it ? Bear in mind that " French gardens " 
is the only proper term for them, and never again 
grate on m.j ears with " English gardens." '^ 

His animosity was naturally intensified on the re- 
sumption of hostilities. The theatres were forbidden 
to perform pieces containing allusions complimentary 
to England, while plays of an opposite character were 
ordered to be performed not only in Paris but at Bou- 
logne, Bruges, and other ports where troops were being 
collected for the invasion. A corps of Irish inter- 
preters was formed, and Chaptal was directed to get 
some invasion songs written and set to music. Pam- 
phlets demonstrating the facility of the invasion or 
vilifying the English were likewise published. One 
of them was entitled, ' The English people, swollen with 
pride, beer, and tea, tried by the tribunal of reason.' 
This was a reprint of Montlosier's articles, but issued 
without his consent. Caricatures were also multiplied, 

^ Remade, Bonaparte et Us Bourbons. 



182 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

One of them represented George iii. as dragged on the 
ground by his hair by a French soldier. His crown 
tumbles off, and the soldier, striking him with his fist, 
says, 'Look to thy crown and defend thy coasts,'^ ' The 
Bayeux tapestry was brought over to Paris to suggest 
the practicabihty or imminency of a landing in England, 
and the Joan of Arc celebration at Orleans, suspended 
since the Revolution, was revived. Even indeed in 
February, three months before the rupture, Napoleon 
had emphatically approved, if not suggested, the 
erection by the Orleans municipality of a statue of 
the heroine. This gave the Times a text for comment- 
ing on the anomaly of the glorification by a usurper 
of the maiden who restored the French crown to its 
rightful owner. Napoleon might, however, have 
rejoined that he had not usurped the crown, but had 
picked it out of the gutter of the Revolution. The 
teaching of English in schools, too, as Lamartine 
testifies, was forbidden. Yet it is but fair to say that 
French was discouraged, as Lord Malmesbury tells us, 
in English schools, and that the Times of January 4, 
1803, contained the following curious article : — 

The political ill-consequences of the spread of the French 
language throughout Europe are admitted ; and we do not 
conceive that its bad effects upon the morals and character 
of other countries will be disputed. We have no hesitation 
to add, that a nation which adopts the language of a superior 
is prepared to admit its yoke. There is no better or quicker 
road to dominion, than by imposing the necessity, or com- 
passing the mode, of making a language general. In this 

* Remade. 



CAPTIVITY 183 

word are comprised the ideas, character, and love of the 
people whose idiom you prefer to your own. 

We never heard it alleged as unwise in the Government 
of China, to intercept all communication between its subjects 
and foreigners. 

Except as a first step and beginning of mischief, all appre- 
hensions from the representation of a French Comedy are 
ridiculous. It is as the mali lobes, the first spot and eruption, 
that we are induced to contend against anything so con- 
temptible as the pic-nickery and nick-nackery — the pert 
affectation, and subaltern vanity of rehearsing to an audience 
that cannot understand, in a language one cannot pronounce ! 

Does any one advantage result to the community of Great 
Britain, from the practice of teaching French indiscriminately 
to every girl whose parents can send her to a boarding- 
school ? 

Does any advantage result from its being taught to shop- 
keepers' sons, at a day-school, for fear foreigners should 
not pawn or buy, for want of understanding them % 

Are not the great part of the female sex, and of the unin- 
formed part of ours, exposed, by this practice, to the moral 
and political corruptions of another country ? Is not the 
business of French Emissaries facilitated by the half- under- 
standing of low and ignorant Englishmen 1 

Ought a girl to be able to read any book that her father 
cannot? Ought she to converse in a gibberish, which her 
mother cannot detect ? 

Ought the mass of a virtuous and happy people to be 
educated to form ideas different from the manners, habits, 
and institutions of their own country ? Ought it to be in the 
power of an enemy to poison their minds, corrupt their prin- 
ciples, and seduce them from their allegiance and religion] 

Napoleon's letters show how jealously he watched 
over the detention of the English, and over every- 



184 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

thing relating to England. Thus in 1806 he ordered 
all Englishmen to be expelled from the Papal States, 
and this order perhaps accounts for Coleridge's belief 
that he had a narrow escape from being seized on 
account of his articles in the Morning Post. It is 
extremely unlikely, however, that Napoleon ever heard 
of Coleridge. He likewise decreed that English civilians 
found in any country occupied by his troops should be 
prisoners, and all English property or merchandise con- 
fiscated. Even any neutral vessel which had entered 
an English port was also to be forfeited. Lord 
Oxford, Lord Mount Cashell, and General Morgan would 
have been arrested at Florence but for the refusal of 
the Queen Regent to act as Napoleon's policeman. 
Again in 1806 Napoleon writes, 'I do not know why 
English prisoners have been placed at Arras ; no doubt 
to be near home so that they may escape.' He writes 
eight months later from Posen : ' Issue a circular and 
take measures that throughout the Empire all letters 
coming from England or written in English and by 
Englishmen shall be destroyed. All this is very im- 
portant, for England must be completely isolated.' In 
1807 he complains that English prisoners still received 
letters. Two years later, on a report that the English 
at Arras and Valenciennes were meditating escape, he 
ordered their removal further inland. This measure 
was extended in 1811 to the prisoners at Brussels. 
The daily police report, which constantly spoke of the 
English prisoners, was evidently scanned by him, even 
when absent from Paris, with great attention; and 
seemingly anxious that no other eye should see these 



CAPTIVITY 185 

documents, he directed that during his absence in 
Russia they should be destroyed. There is conse- 
quently a gap of four months in 1812. Even to the 
last the prisoners were never forgotten by him, for 
on the 6th January 1814 he ordered their removal 
from Verdun to Orleans, manifestly to prevent their 
release by the allied armies. Only in one instance 
do I find his severity relenting. On the 12th Novem- 
ber 1812 at Givet he remarked English prisoners (cap- 
tured soldiers or sailors, of course, not dStenus) who 
had been set to repair a swivel bridge. Eight or ten 
of them jumped with alacrity into a boat to help to 
make the mechanism work. He directed that these 
men should be picked out, presented with 100 francs 
each, and sent back to England. An English clergy- 
man at Givet who had petitioned for a three months' 
visit home was to escort them. A petition from 
another Englishman there was also to be favourably 
considered. It is pleasant to find Napoleon for once 
good-humoured and generous.^ When, in 1812, he 
directed that the smuggling of coffee and sugar into 
Corsica by English vessels should be winked at, and 
that sugar and coffee seized in British bottoms should 
not, like British manufactured goods, be burnt, he 
was obviously inspired by more selfish considerations. 
French fishing-boats were forbidden to pass the night 
out at sea, lest they should smuggle English goods, 
yet they were authorised to smuggle (the French had 

1 England in like manner released in 1810 eighty-four sailors 
of a captured privateer who had rescued a shipwrecked British 



186 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

adopted the word smogler) spirits into England. Fish- 
ing-boats on both sides were unmolested, unless indeed 
they had clandestine passengers on board; and the 
Times, running a light cutter in the Channel, pro- 
cured from them Paris newspapers. Letters were pro- 
bably conveyed occasionally in the same way. England 
had not retaliated against French products, for in 1807 
the Monthly Review appealed to British patriots not 
to continue spending a million and a half a year on 
French brandies and other goods. But Cancale must 
have been unable to continue sending its oysters, one 
hundred and nineteen millions of which had been for- 
warded in the twenty months of peace. The export 
of oysters from Granville and St. Malo was, however, 
permitted by Napoleon in 1810. 

The Irish refugees, whom Napoleon, as we have seen, 
had offered Cornwallis to expel, now became his cats- 
paws. In July 1803, while declining to see Arthur 
O'Connor, he deputed General Truguet to treat with 
him and Berthier to advance him small sums of money. 
He promised to send 25,000 troops to Ireland, and 
if 20,000 Irishmen would join them he pledged him- 
self to make Irish independence a condition of peace. 
But he found that the Irish refugees or emissaries 
were split into two parties, not always on speaking 
terms, O'Connor accepting, the Emmets rejecting, the 
idea of a French protectorate. In July 1804, having 
read a memoir by the Emmets, Lewins, and other 
exiles, he decreed that all Irishmen accompanying 
the projected expedition should be considered French- 
men, and if not treated when captured as prisoners 



CAPTIVITY 187 

of war reprisals would be exercised.^ Robert Emmet 
had had an audience of Napoleon previously to the 
peace, and an Irish legion was formed in November 
1803. MacSheehy organised it at Brest, and on 
the Emperor's coronation it was presented, like the 
French regiments, with an eagle and colours. Irish 
dissensions, however, are proverbial, and a duel be- 
tween MacSheehy and O'Mealy led to the former 
being transferred to a French regiment and to the 
latter resigning and apparently returning to Balti- 
more. In 1806 the legion was ordered to Landau 
and had to pass through Verdun. 

The governor [says Myles Byrne] took upon himself to 
lodge the Irish legion in a suburb, lest its presence might 
not be agreeable to the British prisoners. At daybreak 
he had the drawbridge let down and the gates opened to 
let the legion march through before the English prisoners 
could have light to see and contemplate our green flag and 
its beatific inscription, so obnoxious to them, * the independ- 
ence of Ireland.' Our march, however, through the town 
at that early hour attracted great notice. As our band 
played up our national air of Patrick's Day in the Morning 
we could see many windows opened and gentlemen in their 
shirts inquiring across the street in good English what was 
meant by this music at such an early hour. 

Some months later the legion was ordered to Bou- 
logne, to be ready for the invasion of England, and 
at Arras ' the governor,' says Byrne, ' had the good 
sense to make the English sleep one night in the 
citadel until we marched out in the morning.' The 

^ Correspondance. 



188 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

legion was eventually sent to Spain. The experiment 
of inviting English prisoners to join it did not succeed, 
and in 1810 Napoleon stopped it. 'I do not want 
any English soldiers,' he wrote ; ' I prefer their being 
prisoners to answer for my prisoners in England ; 
moreover the majority desert.' This had apparently 
happened in Spain. In 1811 Napoleon directed Clarke 
to send for O'Connor and his fellow-exiles in Paris 
and try to revive an insurrection. He was ready to 
send 30,000 troops if sure of a rising and if England 
continued to send forces to Portugal. O'Connor 
accordingly sent Napoleon a preliminary memoir, 
whereupon in September he commissioned Clarke to 
despatch agents to Ireland. 

In spite of his ostentatious preparations Napoleon 
told Metternich in 1810 that he had never been mad 
enough to think of invading England unless in the 
wake of an insurrection, the Boulogne army being 
all along aimed at Austria. The latest and fullest 
French writer on the subject. Colonel Desbrieres, from 
an examination of the confused orders and counter- 
orders, so unlike the rest of Napoleon's plans, comes 
to the same conclusion.^ All that Napoleon could 
have intended was to disquiet England, and thus pre- 
vent her from despatching troops to the Continent. 
This was legitimate strategy, and he was obviously, 
moreover, as much entitled to use the Irish as pawns 

^ Projets de Ddbarquement, 1902. Napoleon mystified his subordin- 
ates as well as the foreigner, for on the 22nd August 1805 he wrote to 
Admiral Villeneuve, ' England is ours. All is embarked. Appear 
for twenty-four hours and all is ended' (Eng. Hist. Rev., October 
1903). 



CAPTIVITY 189 

as England had been to use the Vendeans, but his 
manufacture of counterfeit notes is less excusable. A 
manufactory of forged notes in Paris, enshrouded in 
mystery, was superintended by Lale, a clerk in the 
engraving department of the War Office, Fouche, 
Savary, and Desmarest being the only confidants of 
the secret. A Hamburg Jew named Malchus and 
two Frenchmen, Blanc and Bernard, were sent to buy 
merchandise with the notes. They were instructed to 
go to Scotland and Ireland, so as to disappear before 
the fraud was discovered. They were ostensibly told 
to destroy what they bought, but they naturally pre- 
ferred smuggling it into France, and this was winked 
at, so that they made large profits. The fraud was, 
however, soon discovered. Malchus was hanged. His 
confederates escaped in an English smuggling boat 
which was captured by a French revenue vessel. They 
were at first imprisoned at Boulogne, but Savary 
promptly ordered their release, together with funds 
to return to Paris for further employment. Napoleon, 
at a later date, practised the same trick on Russia and 
Austria. On the restoration of peace with the latter 
in 1810, he offered an excuse or rather defence of the 
act to Metternich. He had at that time just ordered 
Fouche to resume the forgery of English notes.^ 

Napoleon, it may be remarked, attributed the rupture 
of 1803 to his refusal to conclude a commercial treaty 

^ See a full account of this in Humanite Nouvelle, July to September 
1899 ; Alien ville, ' Mem. Secrets ' ; Metternich, ' Memoires ' ; Lecestre, 
• Lettres de Napoleon,' containing letters on this subject which were 
suppressed in the collection published by Napoleon iii. 



190 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

' which would necessarily have been detrimental to the 
manufactures and industry of his subjects,' ^ and he 
never relaxed stringency in excluding British mer- 
chandise. As late as 1810 such goods were seized and 
burned at Roscoff, Bale, and Strasburg, though the 
prefect of Strasburg suggested that textiles should be 
utilised in hospitals and ambulances. The war thus 
gave a stimulus to French manufactures, except to 
those hampered by want of raw materials. The ports, 
however, suffered severely through the English blockade, 
especially Nantes and other towns which had had a 
large trade with the West Indies, During the short 
peace Nantes had sent out merchantmen, and sixty 
of these, unable to get back, were captured. Marseilles 
also suffered, but the blockade could not entirely stop 
its trade. 

Even some Englishmen long resident in France were 
declared prisoners and had to plead for exemption. 
Chalmers, a Bordeaux merchant, Scottish on the father's 
side, French on the mother's ; James Macculloch, who 
had been in Brittany for thirty-five years ; James Smith, 
Stone's successor as printer; and James Milne, who 
taught cotton-spinning at the Arts et Metiers, were in 
this position. Chalmers found naturalisation the only 
resource. Smith and Milne, perhaps also Macculloch, 
were struck off the list of captives. As a rule rich 
residents as well as manufacturers and artisans were 
unmolested, for Napoleon was not insensible of the 
advantage thus accruing to Parisian tradesmen. Thus 
Francis Henry Egerton, brother and eventual successor 

1 Talleyrand's letter to Fox, April 1, 1806. 



CAPTIVITY 191 

of the Earl of Bridgewater, an eccentric clergyman or 
ex-clergyman of whom we shall hear anon, was not 
disquieted. According to a French writer he had 
created a scandal which necessitated expatriation, but 
this assertion I have not been able to verify. His chess 
parties in 1807 excited much notice. In 1813 he 
visited Italy. Quintin Craufurd was also unmolested, 
along with his quasi-wife Mrs. Sullivan, who, according 
to a French police register, was originally an Italian 
ballet-dancer, married John O'Sullivan, Under-Secre- 
tary for War and the Colonies, and eloped with 
Craufurd. Another version, however, states that she 
had been the mistress or morganatic wife of the King 
of Wiirtemberg, on whose legitimate marriage she 
withdrew with her daughter to Paris, subsequently 
marrying Sullivan. What is certain is that she had 
cohabited with Craufurd in Paris as long ago as 1787, 
for in that year she had had to fetch him home at 
9 A.M. from the British Embassy after a whole night at 
the card-table. Nothing worse now befell Craufurd 
than a robbery. Madame de GenHs writes on the 23rd 
March 1811 to her adopted son, Casimir Becker: — 

That poor Mr. Craufurd was robbed yesterday while he 
was playing whist at Madame de Talleyrand's. All his 
superb jewels, caskets, rings, gold medals, 300 louis d'or, etc. 
The window was opened by means of a hole cut in the 
shutter, and the desk was forced. But it is believed from 
several indications that what was done to the window was 
merely a feint and that the thief belonged to the house.^ 

Even Craufurd, however, being uncle, as we have 

^ Lettres de Madame de Genlis, 



192 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

seen, of two British diplomatists, incurred the suspicions 
of Fouche's spies, for their report of the 22nd May 1804 

says : — 

It may be supposed that this old man, now Uase, has no 
longer the activity which formerly rendered his house at 
Frankfort a centre of political movements very hostile to 
France, but he is still under the influence of Madame 
Sullivan, that foreigner of easy virtue who facilitated the 
departure of Louis xvi. and started the same day for 
Brussels.^ 

Talleyrand's protection nevertheless ensured him 
against molestation, and he was even permitted to 
procure books from England. In 1816 he obtained the 
restitution of his papers,- seized, like his other effects, 
in 1793, and he claimed 2,230,000 francs compensation 
for his losses. A smaller sum was probably awarded 
him. He continued living in Paris till his death in 
November 1819. A painful episode disturbed his last 
months. Sir James Craufurd went over, and as far as 
can be judged endeavoured to extort from the sick 
uncle a will or a bequest of £48,000 in his favour. 
Though forbidden entrance, he flourished pistols in the 
faces of two servants and forced his way in. He next 
prosecuted Mrs. Craufurd and several of her fashionable 
friends for spreading reports of his conduct, and in 
court he indulged in such personalities that he had to be 
expelled. He also charged the servants with assaulting 
him, but this, like the other accusations, was dismissed, 
and he was eventually twice sentenced by default to 

1 A. F. 1493. 2 T, 1910. 



CAPTIVITY 193 

six months' imprisonment for libellous pamphlets, in 
one of which he accused Mrs Craufurd of bigamy.^ 
Quintin Craufurd was very charitable to the poor of 
Paris. Though primarily a man of fashion, he ranks 
as an author by works on India, Mary Stuart, and 
Marie Antoinette, some of them in French. His 
widow, retaining to the age of eighty -four her vivacity 
and charm, died in Paris about 1832. Her daughter ^ 
married Count Albert d'Orsay, one of Napoleon's 
generals, and thus became the mother of Count 
Alfred d'Orsay, the handsome fop, spendthrift, and 
amateur painter, who in 1827 married Lady Harriet 
Gardner, step-daughter of the famous Lady Blessing- 
ton. Sir James (latterly Sir James Grogan) Craufurd 
died in 1839. 

Fraser Frisell, who, except for a brief visit to his 
native Scotland in 1802, had lived in France since 
1792, was likewise allowed full liberty. 

Americans, it may be mentioned, were liable to be 
arrested as English, for the latter sometimes attempted 
to pass themselves off as Americans. George Matthew 
Paterson, a cousin of Madame Paterson-Bonaparte's 
father, was detained as a British subject. He had, 
indeed, been born in Ireland. He was sent to Valen- 
ciennes, and then to Lille, whence he wrote letters 
to Madame Paterson-Bonaparte complimenting her on 
her marriage with Jerome and desiring to make her 
acquaintance.^ William Russell was at least half 
American. He had got up the Bastille dinner at Bir- 

1 Moniteur, 1819-1820. 2 ggg p 220. 

* Correspondence of Jir6me Bonaparte. Baltimore, 1878. 

N 



194 NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 

mingliam in 1790, whereupon his house was burnt down 
by the mob. He had gone to America in 1795, but in 
1802, being in France on his way to England, he was 
detained till 1814. 

Junot, who as Governor of Paris had to carry out the 
order of detention, was, according to his wife's memoirs, 
very reluctant to do so, and consented only under great 
pressure. He seems, indeed, by all accounts to have 
been inclined to leniency, and Forbes tells us that he 
suggested his obtaining exemption by pretending to be 
a sexagenarian. For a time some captives were allowed 
to remain in Paris, but this did not last long. 
Napoleon, in this as in other cases, interested himself 
in the smallest details. Ol- the 3rd July he ordered a 
hundred of the English in Paris to be sent off. They 
were allowed to choose between Melun, Meaux, Fon- 
tainebleau, Nancy, and Geneva, only twenty-five, mostly 
Irishmen, being permitted to remain in Paris. He 
complained too of having found English at Boulogne 
and Calais. Accordingly forty-eight hours' notice was 
given them — that is to those not of the age to be 
prisoners — to embark for England or to remove into 
the interior. On the 7th July Napoleon gave orders 
that the English officers should be sent to Fontaine- 
bleau or some other town : only forty were to remain in 
Paris ; ' the presence of so great a number of English in 
Paris cannot but cause and does cause great mischief.'^ 
On the 23rd November he ordered that officers, old 
men, and men with wives and children should be 

1 Gorrespondance, 



CAPTIVITY 195 

interned at Verdun. The prisoners at Fontainebleau, 
Phalsbourg, and Marsal were accordingly transferred 
thither. Persons giving cause of complaint were to be 
confined at Bitche,^ Sedan, oi* Sarrelouis, while privates 
and sailors were to be imprisoned at Charlemont and 
Valenciennes. • 

Verdun was obviously chosen because its distance 
from the sea rendered escape difficult. It was a town 
of ten thousand inhabitants, and the influx of English, 
mostly in affluent or at least easy circumstances, 
was a windfall for it. A French newspaper com- 
pared them in fact to sheep enclosed in a fold to 
manure the soil, and it suggested that other towns 
should share the advantage. The mayor of Metz, 
indeed, applied on behalf of that city, but ineffectually. 
Verdun retained a kind of monopoly, a regulated mono- 
poly, for Napoleon in one of his letters (Nov. 24, 1804) 
warned the municipality that unless it kept down the 
price of lodgings, which had risen from 86 to 300 francs 
a month, the English would be sent elsewhere. Some 
of the army or navy officers and captains of merchant- 
men captured during the war were, of course, without 
means, and they had the option of gratuitous accommo- 
dation in the barracks. Another reason for the choice of 
Verdun may have been the absence of any upper class 
with whom the captives could mix, whereas at Nancy, 
the former capital of Lorraine and still a kind of pro- 
vincial Paris, they had much more congenial surround- 
ings. Austrian and Russian prisoners there joined 
them in 1804 in celebrating Carnival. The number of 

^ Now German territory and spelt Bitsch. 



196 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

captives at Verdun from 1803 to 1814 varied from six 
to eleven hundred, but tlie highest number included 
captives made at sea or on battlefields. They procured 
remittances from England through Perregaux, the Paris 
banker, and some obtained permission for their families 
to join them. They had to give their parole not to 
escape as a condition of being allowed to hire their own 
lodgings, a breach of parole entailing incarceration. 
They had to answer to the roll-call morning and night. 
They beguiled their captivity as best they could. 
There were amateur theatricals, cock-fights, and horse- 
races. The prisoners were described by the Argus in 
January 1804 as 'playing, dancing, singing, and 
drinking all day long.' 

Two clubs were formed, one English at Concannon's 
house,^ the other Irish at Carron's, but the latter was 
broken up on account of Hibernian quarrels in 1807. 
Lady Cadogan gave entertainments, and on the Prince 
of Wales's birthday in 1804 Mrs. Concannon issued a 
hundred and twenty invitations to a ball and supper, 
when the costly toilettes of Mrs. Olive, wife of Colonel 
Robert Olive, and those of Mrs. Annesley, were much 
remarked. In 1807 the townspeople were invited by 
four captives to a masquerade ball.^ 

' Young Englishmen,' wrote George Call in his diary, 
after passing through Verdun in 1810, ' are much the 
same whether prisoners or at home, plajdng, driving, 

^ Concannon was ultimately allowed to visit Vienna and to reside 
near Epernay. 

2 At Fontainebleau also there was a theatrical performance for the 
benefit of the penniless captives, Concannon writing the prologue. 



CAPTIVITY 197 

and shooting each other (sic) . . . One might fancy 
oneself in London.' The richer prisoners gave monthly 
subscriptions for their poorer brethren or for schools, 
and the Birmingham Quakers in 1807 opened a sub- 
scription for them, an example followed in 1811 by 
London. The English Government, moreover, at the 
instance of Robson, sent £2000. Dr. Davis gave 
gratuitous medical services to the poorer prisoners. 
Maude and Jordan held Church of England services 
in the college hall, and solemnised marriages the 
validity of which was afterwards disputed. When 
fellow of Queen's College, where he died in 1852, 
Maude used to relate his experiences.^ Captivity re- 
veals character, and there was not unbroken harmony 
or unalloyed respectability. Some speedily got into 
debt, and the authorities had to consider whether im- 
prisonment for debt could be resorted to. This seems 
to have been at first settled in the negative. Lord 
Barrington, in June 1804, gave a Frenchman a draft 
on London which was dishonoured. The holder there- 
upon sued him and obtained judgment, but on appeal 
this was reversed, on the ground that being detained 
Barrington could not have arranged for an extension 
of time. Ultimately, however, we find arrests for debt 
made, and in 1807 Napoleon ordered that such judg- 
ments should be enforced. Waring Knox was in a 
debtors' prison at Saargemtind when, on the inter- 
cession of the Grand Duke of Berg, he received per- 
mission to live at Melun, provided his creditors agreed 
to his exit. While in prison for debt at Valenciennes 

^ Notes and Queries, November 18, 1899. 



198 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

in 1811, he asked for 200 louis and a passport that 
he might go to England, where, having been brought 
up with the Prince Regent, he could procure a con- 
fidential post and could discover and reveal the secret 
projects of the British Government. General Clarke, 
whose Irish extraction and knowledge of England, 
where he had found his first wife,^ made him a good 
judge of such applications, believed, however, that he 
simply wanted to escape from his numerous French 
creditors. Whether the offer was sincere or not it 
was almost equally contemptible. Yet we ultimately 
hear of his giving his poorer countrymen a daily 
meal at Valenciennes, where he died in a debtors' 
prison in December 1813, just before release would 
have come. It is significantly stated that Sir William 
Cooper and Lady Cadogan, on being allowed to quit 
Verdun for Nancy, left no debts behind them, whereas 
half a dozen others had left half a million francs un- 
paid. Police reports of 1804-1805 mention one Wilson 
as behaving indecently with his French mistress at 
the theatre, and striking the officer who reprimanded 
him. He was deservedly sent to Bitche. Wilbraham 
was charged with forgery and with swindling his fellow- 
countrymen. We hear, too, of a duel between ' Gold ' 
( Valentine Goold, or Francis Goold, a surgeon ? ) and 
Balbi, the keeper of the gaming-tables, in which the 
latter was wounded. ' Gold ' was consequently con- 
fined in the fortress, but Napoleon (this proves that 
he looked into everything) ordered his liberation. ' A 
prisoner of war,' he said, 'may fight a duel.' One of 

^ Elizabeth Alexander, divorced by him in 1795. 



CAPTIVITY 199 

the brothers Mellish, interned at Orleans, actually 
challenged the prefect to an encounter. A duel in 1806 
between Captain Walpole and Lieutenant Miles, both 
of the navy, in which the latter was killed, probably 
arose out of a gaming quarrel. In the gaming-room 
figured the notice, ' This bank is kept for the English ; 
the French are forbidden to play at it.' ^ 

The gaming-tables. Lord Blayney was told, cost the 
English prisoners £50,000 a year, but they were eventu- 
ally closed. A Captain Cory, in one of his drunken 
fits, assaulted a French soldier. Colonel William 
Whaley, probably the brother of ' Jerusalem ' Whaley, 
who indulged in quarrelling, duelling, and betting, was 
in 1808 sent to Moulins. He is described as ' notorious 
for immorality and extravagant conduct, and capable 
of the most desperate enterprises.' The English 
Government had refused him a passport for France, 
but he had managed to get there, and after six months' 
incarceration in the Temple at Paris, where he excited 
a mutiny among the prisoners, had been sent to 
Verdun. There in 1811, to revenge himself for a 
refusal to receive him, he denounced Blayney as 
having clandestinely procured plans of French fort- 
resses. The charge was investigated and declared un- 
founded. There were other men base enough falsely 
to denounce fellow-captives. Morshead and Estwicke 
in 1808 were fined 20,000 francs for calumny and 
swindling. Sir. Thomas Wallace was denounced out 
of revenge by MacCarthy as being deep in debt and 
meditating escape or suicide.^ In August 1813 there 

1 Lawrence, Picture, of Verdun, 1810. ^ j^ 7^ 3716. 



200 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

was a scufEe between prisoners and townsmen, which 
gendarmes had to repress. Hutchinson, a teacher of 
languages, was sent to Bitche for insulting a French 
officer. A Captain Hawker and a man named Raine- 
ford, who entered a jeweller's shop on pretence of 
paying a bill, and seriously assaulted him, were sen- 
tenced in 1808 to twelve and six months' imprisonment 
respectively. 'Restless spirits,' says Call, 'do their 
best to compel the French to treat the prisoners 
harshly.' 

Some captives, indeed, brought punishments on them- 
selves. Thomas Devenish, having inveighed against 
Napoleon, was sent to DouUens fortress, but after a 
time was allowed to return, and Brodie, who had taught 
English at Blois, audaciously sent General Wirion, the 
commandant at Verdun, a letter of diatribes against 
Napoleon, for which he was relegated to Bitche. A 
surgeon named Simpson, who at the theatre hissed 
a bust of Napoleon and next day boasted of the act, 
pleaded inebriation, but was consigned to the fortress. 
On the other hand Neilson, captain of a merchant- 
man, obviously tried to curry favour by naming his 
infant Napoleon, and Felix EUice, a prisoner at Thion- 
ville, composed four sonnets and an ode on the birth 
of the King of Rome. Williams, imprisoned at Bitche, 
Avho had been employed by the Admiralty till 1799, 
but had apparently been dismissed, offered in 1804 
and again in 1808 to detect the spies acting for 
England, but his overtures were refused, it being 
believed that the spies had been changed. Two navy 
lieutenants were imprisoned for fourteen days in 1805 



CAPTIVITY 201 

for striking a French officer. A Captain Bannatyne 
and two officers got up theatricals on the plea of in- 
tending to pay debts, but in reality, it was said, to 
swindle their countrymen. Captain Nanney was sent 
to Arras for seducing a townsman's wife, but escaped 
in August 1809. Gentlemen's servants are not always 
of exemplary behaviour, and we hear of ten valets 
being packed off from Verdun, 

These black sheep were of course exceptions, and 
we hear on the other hand of Colonel Reilly Cope 
indulging in botanising, of Forbes having his daughter 
taught to dance, and of Captain Molyneux Shuldham 
constructing a carriage propelled by sails at seven or 
eight miles an hour. Horses, however, being frightened 
by this monster, and a cart being overturned by it, it 
was hissed and stoned by the peasantry. Shuldham 
also invented a boat which, placed on a kind of skates, 
slid over the ice.^ He and others likewise amused 
themselves with rowing, but anglers complained that 
they frightened away the fish, and the pastime was 
consequently forbidden. 

General Wirion, the commandant of Verdun, had 
clearly no enviable position. Not only had he to 
keep the captives in order and prevent escapes, but 
he had to deal with a swarm of French adventurers 
of both sexes who sought to make money by facilitat- 
ing escapes. It was accordingly ordered in July 1805 
that all suspicious women should be expelled, and 
that no passports should be allowed to Verdun unless 
good reasons were shown. Frenchmen, like foreigners, 

1 A. F. iv. 1504. Folkard, The. Sailing Boat, 1853. 



202 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

could not then go freely from one town to another.^ 
Women who had caused quarrels among the captives 
were expelled, but some of them then settled in the 
neighbouring villages. An honourable commandant 
would have found his post unpleasant and irksome, and 
Wirion, the son of a pork butcher, was not even an 
honourable man. He recognised Lord Barrington's 
mistress, Madame St. Amand, who was at first passed off 
as his wife, by calhng on her, and he took money for 
winking at illicit amours. He is said to have recom- 
mended housekeepers or mistresses who were his spies, 
and in one case an Englishman who had foolishly 
told his mistress his plans of escape was betrayed 
by her. Wirion may have thought this a legitimate 
stratagem, but he likewise unblushingly levied black- 
mail, and his subordinates followed suit. He would 
invite himself or be invited to dinner with the wealthier 
captives, and they would allow him to win from them 
at cards, in order to obtain small favours or to avoid 
being sent to Bitche, to which they were liable at 
his mere caprice. He inflicted a fine of 3 francs on 
men failing to present themselves at the roll-call morn- 
ing and night, but not finding many able to pay 6 francs 
a day for late rising and an evening promenade he com- 
muted this for 6 francs or 12 francs a month. In the 
winter of 1804, however, he made one roll-call a day 
suffice, and allowed exceptionally good prisoners to 
appear only every fifth day.^ He received, accord- 
ing to Sturt, 600 francs or 1000 francs a month from 
the gaming-tables as the price of his protection, and 

1 A. F. iv. 1495. 2 A_ j^_ iv_ 1491^ 



CAPTIVITY 203 

he is said to have extorted no less than 136,000 francs 
from a prisoner named Garland. 

Wirion's gendarmes got up lotteries for articles which 
sometimes did not exist, and prisoners had to take 
tickets as the price of small favours. Complaints of 
his extortion were unavailing until the appointment 
as Minister of War of General Clarke. Wirion was 
thereupon summoned to Paris in 1810, and rather 
than face a court-martial he shot himself in the Bois 
de Boulogne. No French newspaper, indeed, records 
this, and though affirmed by Lord Blayney, who arrived 
at Verdun shortly afterwards, I should have felt doubts 
of its accuracy but for finding a passage in Letters 
from the Cape, a pamphlet dictated by Napoleon at 
St. Helena in 1817. It says: — 

The English prisoners detained at Verdun were treated 
with great attention {sic), and a French oflBcer who com- 
manded that depot having been guilty of some extortions 
upon them, an inquiry was in consequence ordered by the 
Emperor, and the culprit was so much afraid of his anger 
that he committed suicide. 

I have, moreover, discovered in the police bulletin of 
April 8, 1810, the following record : — 

General Wirion went yesterday morning at ten o'clock in 
a hackney coach to the Bois de Boulogne. Alighting a few 
steps from the Porte Maillot, he blew out his brains. Upon 
him was found a letter to his wife and another to the doctor, 
asking him to attend to her in these sad circumstances. It 
appears that impatience at the apparent tardiness of the 
commission deputed to investigate the complaints against 
him was the reason of the suicide.^ 

1 E. 7, 3767. 



204 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Wirion's chief subordinate and successor, Colonel 
Courselles, though far from immaculate, was more 
cautious and moderate in his extortions. He confined 
himself to a monopoly of the wine supply, charging 
exorbitant rates, and to paying the allowance to the 
poorer prisoners in livres tournois in lieu of francs, 
thus clearing a profit. Courselles, in his turn, was 
called to account, but he threw the blame on his sub- 
ordinates, one of whom. Lieutenant Massin, shot him- 
self through apprehension of a court-martial. He had 
simply by Courselles' orders destroyed incriminating 
documents, but thus thrown over by his chief he left 
a note stating that though innocent he could not face 
threatened dishonour. It is satisfactory to learn that 
Courselles was likewise removed, that his successor was 
so upright a man that on his death in 1813 all the 
English attended the funeral, and that the next com- 
mandant was still more indulgent, allowing captives 
to live not merely in the outskirts of Verdun but in 
neighbouring towns. 

The captives were popular at Verdun. Some of the 
inhabitants were suspected of allowing letters under 
cover to be directed to them in order to evade their 
being opened and read. It is true that a boy five years 
old, on being jocularly asked by Eyre whether he would 
go with him to England, replied, ' No, all Englishmen 
are bad'; but when in 1805 a hundred and seventy 
of them were transferred to Valenciennes, Givet, and 
Sarrelouis, two hundred inhabitants collected to see 
them off. Women shook hands, even gave kisses, and 
exclaimed, ' Poor young fellows ! ' a proof, says Wirion, 



CAPTIVITY 205 

that the prisoners had gained great influence and that 
their removal was urgent.^ 

Three M.P.'s being among the captives, it will natur- 
ally be asked whether they retained their seats. They 
could not or did not resign, but in those days a con- 
stituency did not suffer much from going without a 
representative. The next general election did not take 
place till 1806. Lord Yarmouth was then re-elected 
for the Irish pocket borough of Lisburn, and continued 
— we can hardly say to sit — for it. In 1822 he was 
called to the Upper House. Lord Lovaine, in like 
manner, remained member for Beeralston, Devonshire. 
He was even nominated in 1804 a Lord of the Treasury, 
and in 1807 an India Commissioner. Thomas Brooke 
was likewise again re-elected for Newton in 1806, but 
he, as we shall see, had escaped from Valenciennes. 
Green, who is described in the police register as a man 
of letters, and Sturt were not re-elected. Tufton, who 
with his brother Charles was detained at Fontaine- 
bleau, and Thompson, who at Orleans inveighed against 
Napoleon, had ceased to be M.P.'s. 

One of the privations of detention was not merely 
the censorship exercised over correspondence but the 
total deprivation of English newspapers. Even before 
the rupture, indeed, only one paltry Sunday paper in 
the pay of Napoleon ^ was allowed to pass through the 
post-office, though the Embassy of course could be 
subject to no such restriction, and other journals could 
be clandestinely perused. Napoleon in August 1802 

1 A. F. iv. 1502-1504. 

'^ Bell's Weekly Messenger, according to Maclean. 



206 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

rebuked Talleyrand for allowing English newspapers to 
reach ' a large number of persons ' by being addressed 
under cover to the Foreign Office/ and Galignani's 
newly opened reading-room must have undergone un- 
foreseen restrictions. When the war broke out Napoleon 
repeated his order that reading-rooms should be allowed 
only one particular English paper, which was suppUed 
them gratuitously. Madame de Remusat says he had, 
however, largely subsidised English journalists and 
writers, apparently to little purpose, but this may be 
considered an exaggeration. Galignani's Monthly Re- 
pertory of English Literature, started in 1807, did not 
compensate for the absence of newspapers. Even the 
Morning Post, though siding with France, was not 
admitted. 

As long as the Argus lasted the captives were fain 
to subscribe to it, for 'infamous' as Forbes styles it, 
it gave copious extracts from the London press, but in 
1810 Napoleon suppressed it, and the prisoners became 
dependent on the meagre and carefully manipulated 
intelligence of the Paris papers. In 1804-1805 several 
prisoners had sent the Argus letters and verses in 
favour of peace, hoping thus, perhaps, to procure 
release. 

For a time the captives were buoyed up by the 
expectation of being exchanged for French soldiers and 
sailors, the balance of numbers being always largely 
as-ainst France; but the British Government refused 
to exchange combatants for civilians, as this would 
have been a recognition of the validity of the deten- 

^ Brotonne, Lettres de NapoUon. 



CAPTIVITY 207 

tion. In the autumn of 1805 the prisoners petitioned 
the Electress (afterwards Queen) of Wlirtemberg, 
Princess Royal of England, to intercede for them, but 
she did not venture to comply, sending word that the 
matter was one for the two Governments.^ There was 
again a gleam of hope in 1806, when, as we shall pre- 
sently see, Lord Yarmouth went to Paris to negotiate, 
but the sky was soon overcast. The temptation to 
escape became stronger as time elapsed and as it 
became clear that the fall of Napoleon would alone 
bring liberation. Some broke their parole. Others 
thought they satisfied honour by sending word just 
before starting that they withdrew their parole. Sir 
James Craufurd, who had been allowed to go for two 
months to Aix-la-Chapelle to take the waters, did not 
return, but got round to England by Sweden, justifying 
himself on the ground that his wife was ill and that 
a lucrative post had been given to another man in 
his absence. The police bulletin scouted his alleged 
anxiety for his wife (a daughter of General Gage), stating 
that he had scandalously treated her, that she had con- 
sequently gone home, and that he had been living with 
a mistress.^ Lord Yarmouth was informed by a corre- 
spondent that the King turned his back on Craufurd 
at a levee, telling him that prisoners ought to keep 
their parole ; the letter added that Craufurd was uni- 



1 A. F. iv. 1495. 

^ A. F. iv. 1491. The mistress was probably the lady for whose 
arrival from Paris he had waited at Calais in 1803, thus losing his 
chance of escape. His breach of parole led to many English at Aix- 
la-Chapelle and elsewhere being relegated to Verdun, 



208 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

versally despised in England.^ A later report, however, 
represented him as receiving £1000 a year from the 
Government, and the Duke of York was reported to 
have said that in such arbitrary detention the parole 
was not binding. Colombine de Jersey, allowed a 
month in England, also did not return. Lord Archibald 
Hamilton escaped in January 1804. Sir Beaumont 
Dixie disappeared from Verdun in September 1804, 
leaving his clothes on the river bank as though he had 
been drowned ; but he had falsified a passport and had 
been assisted by neighbouring villagers in his flight.^ 
He was, however, recaptured and sent .to Bitche, for 
attempts to escape or other misdemeanours entailed 
removal to that or some other fortress. ' There,' says 
the late Mr. Childers, 'the younger members of this 
unlucky colony appear to have amused themselves 
more Britannico in cutting deeply their names and 
descriptions on the outer stone walls of the barrack 
which formed their prison, and I read more than one 
name belonging to well-known English, Scottish, or 
Irish families.' 2 Fox and Addison, doctors on board 
merchantmen, let themselves down by a rope from 
Verdun citadel, but being unable to get across the 
canal at the foot they had to give themselves up. 
Two other doctors, Thomas Clarke and Farrell Mulvey, 
were likewise recaptured and sent to the fortress of 
Metz, Mulvey, however, in 1806 being allowed to return 

1 A. F. iv. 1491. 

^ AUonville states that Frenchmen, indignant at the detentions, 
assisted escapes. 
- Nineteenth Century, May 1888, art. Niederbronn. 



CAPTIVITY 209 

on parole to Verdun. Three surgeons, Baird, Cameron, 
and Hawthorn, escaped. In 1807 a midshipman named 
Temple escaped by crouching at the extremity of a 
carriage, so as to be concealed by two women, his 
French mistress and her maidservant. The carriage 
got to Strasburg, where the mistress, being a native 
of the town, obtained a passport, and Temple was 
smuggled in the same manner to Austria, whence he 
wrote to Colonel Arthur Annesley expressing a hope 
that nobody had been molested as an accomplice. Un- 
fortunately he was not equally sohcitous or scrupulous 
with regard to his creditors, for he left so many debts 
behind him that some of the principal prisoners, revolted 
by his dishonesty, forwarded a memorial to the British 
Government, praying for his dismissal from the navy. 
Annesley himself, whose honeymoon had ended in 
captivity, got away in December 1811. A Dr. Alderson, 
married to a Frenchwoman, not obtaining an answer 
to an application for a visit to England to recover £400, 
took French leave, but his large farm near Lille was 
consequently confiscated. Leviscourt, a navy lieutenant, 
who after several years at large on parole had been 
confined in the fortress and was no longer on parole, 
endeavoured to escape, but being recaptured was 
dragged by gendarmes through Verdun, with a heavy 
cannon-ball fastened to his leg. Worsley, the school- 
master, escaped from Mons to Holland, James Henry 
Lawrence, son of a Jamaica planter and himself a 
Knight of Malta, escaped in 1810 by pretending on 
the road to be a German. He had lived several years 
in Germany, and had published in German a Malabar 

o 



210 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

story, wMch. on his arrival in England he issued in 
English, as also a Picture of Verdun. He subsequently 
led a roving life, chiefly on the Continent, and died in 
1840. His father remained a captive. Another foreign 
knight, of the Order of Maria Theresa, Baron Charles 
Blount, obtained permission to reside at Bonn, but went 
to Cleves and fled. He was, however, recaptured and 
sent to Coblentz fortress. From Valenciennes there 
were forty escapes, and Lawrence says, ' Every morning 
those who came upon the promenade inquired who 
had decamped in the preceding night.' Fortunately 
there was yet no electric telegraph to give the hue and 
cry. Colonel Hill, of the Shropshire militia, probably 
a brother of Lord Hill, escaped and rejoined his regi- 
ment. Brooke, M.P. for Newton, Lancashire, quitting 
a large dinner-party at Valenciennes in October 1804, 
audaciously drove through the town with his French 
valet, who had obtained a passport for two merchants, 
and safely reached Cologne. Francis and Thomas 
Jodrell waited in December 1803 on the commandant 
of Valenciennes, told him they withdrew their parole, 
and drove off. Colonel Smyth accompanied them. 
All three were recaptured in the duchy of Berg, albeit 
Bavarian soil, and Napoleon had ordered a court- 
martial, but they giving a sentry the slip got clear off. 
Francis was High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1813 ; Thomas 
was killed at Rosetta in 1807. Philip de Crespigny, 
who had been married at the Danish Embassy in 
1809, escaped from St. Germain in 1811. Wright, a 
midshipman, brother of the unfortunate Captain John 
Wesley Wright, facilitated the escape of a friend by 



CAPTIVITY 211 

holding the rope with which he descended from the 
ramparts at Verdun, whereupon he was consigned 
to the fortress. So also was Knox, he having be- 
come surety for a Captain Brown, who escaped but 
was recaptured. 

Wirion, by Napoleon's orders, gave notice in 1805 
after three escapes that the captives must be responsible 
for one another if they wished to be treated as men of 
honour, and that at the first escape all would be sent 
to fortresses. In 1806, moreover, a reward of 50 francs 
for the capture of any fugitive was offered at Valen- 
ciennes. It was very hard on the sureties to be shut 
up in a fortress if the men for whom they were answer- 
able did not return on the expiration of their leave 
of absence, but this may in some cases have been 
preconcerted. When in 1807 the Arras and Valen- 
ciennes captives were removed to Verdun, Wirion 
gave warning that the first man attempting to escape 
would be shot, such being the legal punishment for 
breach of parole. This excited murmurs against terror 
and tyranny. Yet very shortly afterwards he reported 
escapes, and it does not appear that he ever en- 
forced his threat, although Napoleon in January 1811 
ordered that attempted escapes should be punished 
with death and that the sentences should be placarded.^ 
It is obvious, indeed, that England would have threat- 
ened reprisals. Sentences of six years' confinement 
in irons were, however, inflicted on private soldiers 
and sailors, for I find that in 1812 Thomas Hudson, 
who by means of a forged passport had attempted 

^ Brotonne, Lettrea de Napoleon, 



212 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

in 1808 to escape from Metz, had the remainder of 
the penalty remitted on the ground that he had been 
instigated by a fellow-prisoner.^ Had such punish- 
ments been imposed on captives of higher status 
England would manifestly have retaliated. Alexander 
Don, heir to a Scottish baronetcy, escaped from Paris 
in 1810. In 1808 he had been required to leave that 
city for either Verdun or Melun, but must have 
obtained leave to return. An Italian lady, claiming 
to have been married to him in Paris, but suspected 
of being merely his mistress, was living at Florence 
in 1812. He became intimate with Sir Walter Scott, 
who speaks of his literary and artistic tastes, his lively 
manners, his love of sport, and his oratorical powers, 
while Lockhart describes him as courteous, elegant, 
accomplished, and the model of a cavalier. He was 
latterly M.P. for Roxburghshire, and died in 1826 at 
the age of forty-seven. His uncle, General Sir George 
Don, had been captured and detained at Lille in 1799, 
when he went with a flag of truce to General Daendels 
bearing a proclamation from the exiled Statthalter, 
The French Government threatened to shoot him 
in reprisals if Napper Tandy and his companions were 
executed. An exchange for Don with Tandy was 
declined by England, as also an exchange with a 
French general. England in 1800 claimed his uncon- 
ditional release, on pain of imprisoning the French 
generals at liberty on parole. His wife, seeing no 
prospect of his release, applied for a passport to 
join him. He continued a captive till June 1800. 

1 A. F. iv. 1234. 



CAPTIVITY 213 

John, afterwards General Sir John Broughton, a 
Staffordshire baronet's heir, got off in the guise of 
a courier. 

Two sailors named Henson and Butterfield escaped 
from Verdun, traversed all France, and reached the 
Mediterranean coast, but were there arrested and sent 
to Bitche. Philip Astley, the circus owner whose 
arrival in Paris has been mentioned, obtained a pass- 
port for Savoy on pretence of wishing to open a circus 
there, but he went on to Italy and thence escaped. 
He was destined to revisit and be buried in Paris 
in 1814. James Callender or Campbell of Ardinglas, 
endeavouring to escape, was sent to Ham, the fortress 
in store forty years later for Louis Napoleon. While 
there he became the successor to a cousin's estates 
of £3000 a year, but it was several years before he 
heard of it. He offered to present his horse to 
Napoleon, thinking thus to be liberated, but Napoleon 
insisted on his fixing a price and then sent him double 
the sum. Campbell revisited Paris in 1815 and was 
sent by Napoleon to the Conciergerie. This was pro- 
bably at the instigation of his alleged wife.^ Captain 
Charles Cunliffe Owen, father of Sir Philip of South 
Kensington fame, seems in 1811 to have shammed 
lunacy and was consequently placed in an asylum 
at Valenciennes.2 He had cut a vein, but not danger- 
ously, and had denounced an imaginary plot for seizing 
Belleisle. He was transferred to a private asylum in 
Paris, whence in July 1812 he escaped. Captain 
Francis TuUoch, who in 1808 had been removed from 

1 See p. 67. 2 F. 7, 3773 and 3776. 



214 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Cambrai to Verdun, effected his escape in December 
1810. 

John Harvie Christie, who had gone to France to 
economise, after spending three weeks in Paris repaired 
to Bordeaux, Returning after two months to the 
capital, he found that arrests had just been ordered. 
He went to the Norman coast, hoping to embark as 
an American, but was apprehended at Fecamp, having 
unluckily in his possession a manuscript copy of 
satirical verses on Napoleon and Josephine,^ He was 
tried on the charge of espionage, and though acquitted 
remained a prisoner. Henry Dillon and Lynch were 
arrested at Caen in 1809, and Poppleton, the teacher 
of English, who with three Frenchwomen had abetted 
their escape, was sent to prison for two months.^ John 
Giffard, arrested in 1811 on the point of embarking at 
Honfleur, was consigned to a lunatic asylum, William 
Throckmorton, a friend of Miss Berry, was also 
recaptured at Honfleur in the same year. Another 
fugitive bore the appropriate name of Hurry, and 
Wirion being just then absent, his subordinate 
Courselles was suspected of having been bribed. 
Hurry was a freemason, and with a hundred of the 
captives had been admitted into the Verdun lodge. 
Wirion recommended that such admissions should 
be forbidden, for a French mason had confessed in 
private conversation that he should have felt bound, 
had Hurry applied to him, to facilitate his escape.^ 
But non-masons also promoted escapes, for filthy lucre's 

1 A, F. iv. 1237. - F. 7, 3763. 

3 F. 7, 3716. 



CAPTIVITY 215 

sake. Indeed this became a trade, and in 1811 two 
captains at Bruges were arrested for visiting the depots 
and offering passports.^ In 1809 six inhabitants of 
Arras were prosecuted for facilitating the escape of 
an English lord, and at Verdun a breach was discovered 
in the walls just in time to prevent escapes. These 
had been so numerous among captains and officers of 
merchantmen that, with the exception of those above 
fifty years of age or those having their wives with 
them, they were ordered to sleep in the citadel. Per- 
mission to go outside the town within four miles 
was also revoked, but was afterwards renewed on 
condition of mutual suretyship. Augustus Bance, at 
Valenciennes, applied for French citizenship and for 
permission to open a soap factory at Antwerp. The 
latter application was refused, on the ground of Antwerp 
being too near the frontier, but while the naturalisation 
question was pending he escaped. 

Mogg and three companions escaped from Arras 
in 1810, concealing themselves in the day-time and 
guided at night by the moon towards the coast. In 
a wood near Boulogne, they cut down trees and made 
a small boat, which a layer of suet rendered water- 
tight, and they had brought sails and rope with them. 
They were, however, discovered. The authorities 
ordered the boat to be launched as an experiment, 
and there was not the slightest leakage. The men's 
ingenuity was admired, and they told the police 
inspector that if the Emperor was informed of their 
daring scheme he would certainly grant them their 

1 F. 7, 3773. 



216 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

liberty. One of them was accordingly taken before 
Napoleon, who asked him whether his motive had 
not been a desire to rejoin a mistress. 'No,' he 
replied, 'it was to see my aged mother.' Thereupon 
Napoleon, remarking that she must be a good mother 
to have such a son, released him, giving him a small 
sum for his mother. We are not told whether his 
companions were also liberated. Equally venturesome 
was William Wright. He became interpreter to 
General Braban9on, and ultimately contrived to get 
on board an English flag-of-truce vessel. He crept 
into a trunk till the usual search before departure 
was over, and after passing an hour in this uneasy 
posture was safe. In his Narrative of the Situation 
and Treatment of the English arrested hy order of the 
French Government, Wright states that at Valenciennes 
an English hotel-keeper. King, who had resided there 
for twenty years, was very kind to his captive country- 
men. Prisoners without money, says Wright, were 
harshly treated, but the officials were open to bribes. 
William Hamilton, according to a Boulogne tradition, 
was assisted in an unsuccessful attempt to escape by 
his jailer's daughter, whom he afterwards married. 
He had entered the navy in 1803, and was captured 
in 1805. In 1817 he was appointed Consul at Flush- 
ing, in 1818 at Ostend, in 1820 at Nieuport, and in 
1822 at Boulogne. He was knighted on his retirement 
in 1873, and died in 1877, aged eighty-eight, being 
probably the last survivor of Napoleon's prisoners. 

Stewart Kyd, the ex-radical, and Dr. Barklimore 
escaped, but the two bankers, Boyd and Benfield, had 



CAPTIVITY 217 

to undergo the full time of detention, Benfield died in 
Paris, in straitened circumstances, in 1810. One of 
his daughters married Grantley Berkeley. According 
to a police bulletin Benfield was a nullity, whereas 
Boyd was acquiring a thorough knowledge of French 
institutions. He arbitrated on a claim against the 
French Government by Schweizer, Swan's partner and 
antagonist, who pronounced him to be a man of great 
culture and acknowledged probity. He also wrote 
pamphlets on financial subjects. He was indemnified 
for French confiscation, and from 1823 to 1830 was 
M.P. for Lymington. He died in 1837. Another man 
who made good use of his time was Tuckey, who, 
captured in 1805, compiled a maritime geography 
in three volumes. He had previously published an 
account of a voyage to Botany Bay with a cargo of 
convicts. He died while exploring the River Congo 
in 1816. 

In several instances besides those already mentioned 
detention was followed up by actual incarceration. 
James Smith, the filter-maker, was sent to the Temple 
in 1804 for talking against the French and extolling 
the defences of England, to which he had paid frequent 
visits.^ Colonel Stack was charged in the same year 
with espionage. It is even alleged, but this cannot 
be verified, that he was condemned to be shot as an 
accomplice of the Due d'Enghien, but was reprieved. 
What is certain is that he spent three years in Bitche 
citadel, afterwards remaining a prisoner at Verdun till 
1814. Colonel William Edwards, a Jamaica planter, 

1 A. F. iv. 1490. 



218 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

brother I think of Bryan Edwards, M.P., was im- 
prisoned seven years on suspicion of having facilitated 
escapes. The youngest of his twenty-nine children, 
born at Bruges in 1800, was Milne Edwards, the 
eminent French naturalist. 

We now come to the liberations and permissions 
to visit or settle in various towns, for each of which 
Napoleon's express sanction was necessary, and we 
may begin with Lord Yarmouth, since he owed his 
liberty to negotiations, albeit fruitless, for peace. He 
had become a prisoner under trying circumstances. 
He went over to fetch his wife and children just as 
the rupture had occurred, and he inquired at Calais 
whether he might safely land. He was answered in 
the affirmative, yet no sooner had he done so than he, 
with all his fellow-passengers, was declared a prisoner. 
Curiously enough, however, he professed to consider 
the detentions as justified by the embargo in England. 
He was sent to Verdun, but it was alleged in March 
1804 that he had been seen in Paris. Wirion, re- 
proached with laxity on this account, denied, however, 
that he had gone further afield than Clermont on an 
affair of gallantry. He had been exempted, indeed, 
from the twice-a-day roU-caU tiU all exemptions had 
been abolished, and he had also been allowed to go 
out shooting; but Wirion urged that permission to 
go outside the town tended to prevent escapes by 
rende^'ing them dishonourable, and if such permissions 
were to be refused the garrison should be strengthened, 
the walls being so dilapidated that egress was easy.^ 

1 A. F. iv. 1328. 



CAPTIVITY 219 

Yarmouth's motlier had been in favour with the Prince 
of Wales, and he himself had then, as a youth, been 
admitted to Carlton House. When, therefore. Fox in 
1806, on the death of Pitt, became Foreign Secretary, 
the Prince asked him to intercede with Talleyrand for 
Yarmouth's release. Napoleon is said to have imagined 
that Fox was himself interested in Yarmouth. He 
consequently not only gave Yarmouth unlimited leave 
of absence, but suggested that negotiations should be 
opened through this channel. In August 1805 Yar- 
mouth had already been authorised to quit Verdun for 
six months and to live near, but not at, Paris. He 
announced that he chose Versailles, but nevertheless 
joined his wife in Paris. This contravention was re- 
ported by the police, but was winked at for a time.^ 
In September, however, he was ordered to repair to 
Melun. In May 1806 he was allowed, together with 
Lord Elgin, General Abercromby, and Captain Leveson- 
Gower, to embark at Morlaix for England. He re- 
turned via Calais in June with credentials authorising 
him to negotiate. He was not a novice in diplomacy, 
for in 1793 he had been sent on a mission to Prussia, 
charging only his expenses. The police bulletins show 
how closely all his movements were now watched. 
They tell us how he went to the Opera, and how he 
wanted to buy French rentes to the amount of a 
million francs at one stroke, but could only purchase 
first 100,000 francs and then 500,000 francs. He called 
on Quintin Craufurd, Mrs. Sullivan being a friend of 
Lady Yarmouth, and he was said to be in love with 

1 A. F. iv. 1494. 



220 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

her daughter, the so-called Mademoiselle de Dorset.^ 
In case of the success of his mission he was said to 
intend buying up all the French brandy in the market 
and selling it at triple price. A man of pleasure and 
an art connoisseur, Yarmouth could scarcely be much 
of a diplomatist, and in August Lord Lauderdale was 
sent to join him. He was believed to feel annoyance 
at this. Lauderdale, as we have seen, was a follower of 
Fox and had always advocated peace. At the end of 
August Yarmouth was recalled, announcing, however, 
that he should return in January, and hoped then to 
conclude peace, but Lauderdale had really superseded 
him. Lauderdale nevertheless had committed a mis- 
take at the outset. He had asked to be presented to 
Napoleon, and had had to be told that it was not cus- 
tomary for a plenipotentiary of a country still at war 
to be allowed an audience, yet it was evidently no fault 
of his if the negotiations proved abortive. According 
to a French writer who had studied the documents of 
the French Foreign Office,^ Yarmouth on the I7th July 
submitted to Champagny a draft treaty by which 
England gave up Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte and re- 
cognised Napoleon's conquests in Holland, Germany, 
and Italy; but Napoleon, instead of closing with so 
advantageous an offer, awaited the result of his negotia- 
tions with Russia. All August was consequently wasted 
in futile discussions of formalities, and when the Russian 



^ There is a mystery about her paternity, but there seems to be a 
hint that she was a natural daughter of the Duke of Dorset. 

2 M. Coquelle, paper read at the Congress of French Learned 
Societies at Paris, 1902. 



CAPTIVITY 221 

negative answer arrived Napoleon gave vent to his 
exasperation by breaking o£f the negotiations with 
England, so that Lauderdale at the beginning of 
October quitted Paris. The last police bulletin in 
which he is mentioned absurdly describes him as a 
spy, who had doubtless sent home information of 
military movements and of public feeling in Paris. 

Both he and Yarmouth now disappear from the 
scene, but Lady Yarmouth remained in France, being 
allowed to pay occasional visits to England.^ Lady 
Hester Stanhope alleges that she had a French lover. 
If this scandal has any foundation Yarmouth shared 
the fate of Lord Elgin, who, as we have seen, was 
liberated with him. His too was a hard case. Re- 
turning from the Constantinople Embassy, he had pass- 
ports from French consuls in Italy, and though not 
reaching Paris till after Whitworth's departure had 
been assured by Talleyrand that he might safely re- 
main, and he doubtless hoped French waters might 
relieve his chronic rheumatism. Lord Hawkesbury 
(afterwards Lord Liverpool), who, according to Trotter's 
Life of Fox, had in 1802 accepted a handsome Sevres 
dinner-service from Napoleon, in his diplomatic circular 
of the 30th April 1804 made a pointed allusion to Elgin 
when he said : — 

' They (the French Government) promised their protection 
to such of the subjects of England as were resident in 
France who might be desirous of remaining there after 
the recall of His Majesty's ambassador. They revoked this 

^ Her son, Lord Henry Seymour, born in 1805, is said to have never 
set foot in England. 



222 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

promise without any previous notice, and condemned these 
very persons to be prisoners of war, and still retain as 
such in defiance of their own engagements and of the 
universal usage of all civilised nations. They applied this 
new and barbarous rule even to individuals who had the 
protection and authority of French ambassadors and ministers 
at foreign courts to return in safety through France to their 
own country.' 

Talleyrand, in his annotations to this circular in 
the Moniteur of the 5th November 1804, and in his 
counter-circular, was significantly silent on this pass- 
age, which indeed was obviously unanswerable. Elgin, 
at first detained with sixty fellow-captives at Orleans, 
was allowed to go to Bareges and to send to England 
in October 1803 for Dr. William Scott, on whose report 
he was permitted to repair to Paris. Owing, however, 
to an unfounded rumour that General Boyer was in- 
carcerated in Scotland, whereas he was really on parole 
at Chesterfield, Elgin was ordered back to the Pyrenees. 
His wife remained in Paris, and he was not allowed 
to go thither to her confinement, which took place on 
the 4th March 1804; but the infant expired on the 
20th April. He arranged, however, for daily tidings 
of her. When Thiebault delivered a message from him 
to her she showed no sign of affection, and General 
Sebastiani was then lolling on her sofa as though quite 
at home. She had, however, already made the ac- 
quaintance of Robert Ferguson of Raith, son of William 
Ferguson, who in 1793 had succeeded to the property 
of his uncle Robert Ferguson, a rich China merchant. 
Being also one of the British captives, Ferguson was 



CAPTIVITY 223 

frequently invited to tlie Elgins' Paris house. He was 
released as an F.R.S. and a mineralogist in 1805. Lady 
Elgin, who had joined her husband at Bareges in June 
1804, went over to England in 1806 to try and get her 
husband exchanged for General Boyer. Thence she 
wrote affectionate letters, and Ferguson also wrote as 
though interested in the exchange. But Elgin on his 
release in 1807 discovered letters addressed to her by 
Ferguson, which Garrow, Ferguson's counsel at the 
crim. con. trial, described as ' a most ridiculous medley 
of love and madness, or love run mad.' ■ They would 
disgrace,' he said, ' the worst novel of the last century.' 
£10,000 damages were awarded. Ferguson married 
the frail lady — Anne Nesbit was her maiden name i — 
got into Parliament for Fife in 1806, and died in 1841. 
He was cousin to the Miss Berrys, and had once been 
engaged to Agnes. Before leaving Elgin, it should be 
stated that Napoleon, styling him ' one of the greatest 
enemies of the nation,' had rebuked General Olivier 
for showing him attentions at Livourne. Napoleon 
had a grudge against Elgin, who, he imagined, sent the 
information which enabled Nelson to follow the French 
fleet and destroy it at Aboukir. Elgin married again 
in 1810, was the father of Dean Stanley's wife, and 
died in Paris in 1841. 

Lady Elgin was not the only faithless wife, for in 
1808 Scott, formerly vice-consul at Naples, declined to 
take back his wife, who had been arrested while 
cohabiting with an Englishman at Saarlibre, and he 

^ Her father, Hamilton Nesbit, had in 1802 returned through Paris 
from a visit to her at Constantinople. 



224 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

recommended her being sent to England, as he had 
long disowned her and she was penniless.^ Lady Webb, 
letting herself down from a window in Paris, is said, 
moreover, to have eloped with Fursy-Guesdon, a 
novelist, and grandson of the actor Preville.^ She knew 
Madame Recamier and Chateaubriand. 

Lord Beverley and Lord Lovaine, the eldest of his 
fourteen children, found more indulgence. Though 
not released, they were permitted in 1805 to reside at 
Moulins, which Lovaine liked so well that he remained 
with his young family after 1814, though no longer a 
captive. He was fond of hunting, lived in style, and 
was very charitable. At the age of eighty-seven he 
became Duke of Northumberland, but enjoyed the 
honour only two years. Just after the capitulation of 
Paris in 1814 he and two of his sons lunched with 
Josephine, who told him that the English were the only 
people generous enough to speak respectfully of the 
fallen Napoleon. In order to have done with peers, 
let me here note that Lord Duncannon must have 
been released before November 1805, when he married 
in England, and that the Duke of Newcastle, who came 
just within the age of Napoleon's terrible decree, was 
released with his mother in 1807. The mother had 
pleaded ill-health and family affairs, had offered a 
profusion of compliments to Napoleon, and had 
adduced her succour to French prisoners previously to 
the peace. She had been allowed in 1804 to go to the 
Pyrenees and in 1806 to settle at Tours. 

Some scientists, scholars, and physicians owed their 
1 F. 7, 3716. ^ Revue R4trospective, vol. 14. 



CAPTIVITY 225 

release to Banks and Jenner on the one hand, and 
Carnot, Cuvier, and French doctors on the other. Lord 
Shaftesbury appears to have been liberated as an F.R.S., 
but possibly as a friend of Fox. James Forbes, another 
F.R.S., who with his wife and daughter arrived in Paris 
from Brussels the very day after the decree was issued, 
was liberated in June 1804 through Carnot. He had 
previously been allowed to visit at Tours his brother 
Major Charles Forbes, with his wife and five children.^ 
Pinkerton, the geographer, was likewise released in 
1805. Dr. Carmichael Smyth, having in early life 
travelled in France and kept up a correspondence with 
French physicians, profited by their intervention.^ Dr. 
Maclean urged that he had not been in England for ten 
years, and this plea availed him, Jenner sent a letter 
to Napoleon in behalf of William Thomas Williams, 
which Napoleon at first cast aside, but Josephine 
picking it up told him it was from Jenner. 'Ah,' he 
then exclaimed, ' I can refuse nothing to so great a man.' 
Williams, who on watching Napoleon for a full hour at 
the Paris Opera had noticed that he never once smiled, 
thought his countenance, on seeing him again at 
Nancy in 1805, mild, though haughty. Jenner, a 
correspondent of the Institute in 1808 and a foreign 
associate of it on the death of Maskelyne in 1811, 
also secured the release of Dr. Wickham,^ and 
through Corvisart, the Emperor's physician, that of 
Nathaniel Garland and Valentine Goold. Corvisart 

' Charles escaped in August 1810. 

^ Notes and Queries, February 3, 1900. 

^ Baron, Life of Jenner. 



226 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

likewise intervened for Dr. Burrell Davis, who after 
graduating in medicine at Montpellier had been rele- 
gated to Verdun, and who published a striking 
pamphlet against premature burial. This he forwarded 
to Corvisart, along with a petition to Napoleon. 
Doctors indeed, as was but right, were less harshly 
treated. They were permitted to make journeys to 
English patients, and in 1810 nine were granted pass- 
ports for England. Alexander Hamilton, though not 
yet an F.R.S., doubtless owed his release to having cata- 
logued the Sanscrit manuscripts in the Paris Library. 
Colclough became a member of a literary society at 
Nimes, in order to procure release as a scholar, but 
whether this availed him is doubtful, for we do not 
hear of him as a resident Irish landlord till after 
Napoleon's fall. 

John Spencer Stanhope, of Cannon Hall, Yorkshire, 
treacherously delivered up in 1810 by a Gibraltar 
privateer, was liberated in March 1813, at the inter- 
cession of the Institute, in order to make an archaeo- 
logical visit to Greece : but literary or artistic accom- 
plishments did not always secure release. Joseph 
Forsyth discovered this to his cost. An Elgin man, his 
father intimate with Isaac Watts, he had eagerly 
embraced the opportunity of visiting Italy. Starting as 
early as October 1801, he reached Nice on Christmas 
Day and spent seventeen months in Italy, but on re- 
entering France in May 1803 he found himself a 
prisoner and was confined at Nimes. Attempting in 
the winter to escape, he was relegated to Bitche, where 
for two years he was in close confinement. He was 



CAPTIVITY 227 

then allowed to go on parole to Verdun. There lie 
prepared and published in London an account of his 
artistic tour, and had copies sent to France in the 
hope that it would serve him a good turn. But from 
want of interest, perhaps too on account of his unlucky 
attempt to escape, he could obtain no greater favour 
than permission to live in Paris, and even this after 
four months was revoked. He had to repair to 
Valenciennes and wait till 1814. He died in the 
following year. Curiously enough, he regretted the 
publication of his book, albeit it possessed considerable 
merit. 

Monroe, author of the famous 'doctrine,' then 
American Ambassador at London, was applied to by 
prisoners' friends to solicit their liberty through his 
Paris colleague Livingston, whose dispatches to Wash- 
ington were sent by flag of truce through Mor- 
laix. Ferguson, Lady Elgin's paramour, seems to have 
been thus released, and a Colonel Johnston was thus 
allowed to go to France to see a kinsman named 
Oliphant. 

But while release came to some after a few months, 
it did not come to others till after long years. Robson, 
ex-M.P., confined at Nimes, must have had influential 
friends to obtain permission to embark at Emden as 
early as November 1803. Sir Thomas Hare and young 
Augustus Foster were apparently indebted to friends 
in high quarters for release. A wife's heroic efforts, 
which, however, are not particularised, also effected 
the liberation of General Sir Charles Shipley. 

Chenevix, whose friendship with Berthollet stood 



228 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

him in good stead, in July 1803 read a paper before 
the Institute on 'palladium,' the metal discovered in 
platinum ore by Wollaston, and sent articles to a 
French chemical journal. He was one of the original 
contributors to the Edinburgh Review, in which, 
according to Thomas Moore, who met him at Paris in 
1821, he wrote against France. He was able without 
hindrance to visit Germany and Spain, as well as 
the Black Sea. In 1812 he married a French 
countess, and remained in France until his death in 
1830. 

One of the likeliest ways of obtaining release was 
to petition Napoleon or Josephine in person. Mrs. 
Tuthill managed to present her petition to the Emperor 
while out hunting, and he could not deny a lady, 
especially a great beauty. Mrs. Cockburn obtained an 
introduction to her fellow-Creole Josephine, where- 
upon Napoleon ^ in - July 1803 wrote, ' Do what is 
proper for Coxburn' {sic). It was not, however, till 
1805 that he obtained permission to go to England for 
twelve months, doubtless a euphemism for release. 
Cockburn, like Yarmouth, had been allowed to go out 
hunting at Verdun. John Maunde, an old Bluecoat 
scholar, was released in 1807, whereupon he went to 
Oxford to study for the Church, became curate of 
Kenilworth, and formed an intimacy with Lucien Bona- 
parte, in his turn a captive, whose poem he was trans- 
lating into English when he died in 1813. 

Sir Grenville Temple was allowed in 1804 to go to 

^ Who little imagined that Admiral Cockburn, a kinsman of the 
prisoner, would convey him in the Northumberland to St. Helena. 



CAPTIVITY 229 

Switzerland, and in 1810 to embark for America with 
his rich Bostonian wife and their four children. 
Sampson Eardley was released in March 1806. Captain 
Walter Stirling was liberated in time to testify at 
the Elgin trial to the conjugal harmony which had 
previously existed. Colonel Moles worth in 1804 had 
permission to visit England, which probably meant 
release. John Parry, more fortunate than his brother 
James, was struck off the list of captives. He alleged 
that he had been expelled from England for writing in 
favour of peace, and he solicited and obtained permission 
in 1809 to go and see after his brother's property, in- 
tending to return and marry at Tours. Henry Seymour, 
the ex-M.P. and lover of Madame Dubarry, was allowed 
in 1809 to go to Switzerland. He had previously been 
permitted to reside at Melun and Paris. Richard 
Trench, who had been married at the British Embassy 
in March 1803 to Melesina, daughter of the Rev. Philip 
Chenevix and widow of Colonel St. George, was allowed 
in August 1803, on account of ill-health, to go to 
Orleans, his wife having managed through influence to 
save her husband from being sent to Verdun. From 
Orleans she made repeated visits to Paris to intercede 
for him. Her husband once in 1805 accompanied her, 
and in a secluded part of the Bois de Boulogne meeting 
the Emperor, told him which way the stag had gone. 
Napoleon, however, was angry at thus meeting alone a 
tall young Englishman who had come to Paris without 
leave, and after a night in prison Trench was ordered 
to Verdun, He was soon allowed to live in Paris, but 
it was not till 1807 that Mrs. Trench, by personally 



230 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

presenting her petition, secured her husband's release.^ 
Meanwhile she had given birth to Francis, a theological 
writer whom I remember as rector of Islip, but Richard, 
the archbishop, was not born till 1808, after her return 
to Dublin. 

There is no record in the police bulletins of the 
release of Thomas Manning, who hastened to Paris 
from Angers on hearing of the rupture. The family- 
tradition is that he owed his deliverance to Carnot 
and Talleyrand. Let us hope that he got back in 
time to be one of the Diss volunteers who in October 
1803 received notice to be in readiness to march to 
London on the first notification of a French invasion — 
an invasion, however, which, argued a letter in the 
Times, should be welcomed as ensuring a grand haul 
of prisoners. In 1817, on his way back from Tibet, he 
stopped at St. Helena and presented the captive Emperor 
— their positions had been almost reversed — with tea, 
coffee, tobacco, two silk pocket-handkerchiefs, and two 
feather fans.^ He had been strictly charged to address 
Napoleon as 'general,' but when asked by whom his 
passport in 1803 had been signed, he replied, ' By your- 
self, by the Emperor.' Napoleon's face lit up at this 
recognition of his rank by an Englishman. Impey was 
released in July 1804, perhaps through Madame Talley- 
rand, whom he must have known at Calcutta. Sir 
James de Bathe is said to have procured the inter- 
cession of the Pope, to whom it was represented that 
his children in England might in his absence be made 

^ Remains of Mrs. Trench. 

2 Mr. E. B. Harris, Athenceum, February 24, 1900. 



CAPTIVITY 231 

Protestants. His son and heir was then only a boy 
of ten. Sir James died in 1808. Greathead, the life- 
boat inventor, was released in December 1804, quite 
cured of democracy, it was said, by his French treat- 
ment, Greatheed, with whom he must not be confused, 
was allowed with his son to go to Dresden and thence 
to Italy. The son died at Vicenza in 1804 at the age 
of twenty-three. Granby Sloper, who had settled at 
Paris in 1789 and had been imprisoned there in 1794, 
though struck off the list of captives in 1808 and allowed 
to live in Paris, had been arrested in 1806 as an accom- 
plice of Wickham; but on proof that he had simply 
when at Berne asked the latter for a passport for 
England he was liberated.^ William Stone, who, as 
already stated, had taken refuge in France after his 
acquittal of high treason in London in 1796, was un- 
molested, and became eventually steward to an English- 
man named Parker at Villeneuve St. George. 

One of the most singular cases of lenity is the per- 
mission given in 1808, on the recommendation of a 
Paris professor, to the two brothers Lambert to leave 
Givet and exhibit themselves all over France. For 
several generations their family had had a scaly or 
horny epidermis. ^ 

There is a solitary case of refusal to accept release. 
Richard Oliver, ex-M.P. for the county of Limerick, 
though in ill-health and anxious to leave with his 
mother and sister, declined without consulting them 
on learning that the passport had been granted at the 
instance of Arthur O'Connor, whom he had formerly 

1 A. F. iv. 1496. 2 A. F. iv. 1512. 



232 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

known. He disdained to be under obligation to a 
conspirator. 

It would have been strange if money as well as 
influence had not sometimes secured release. The 
Rev. W. H. Churchill, of Colliton, Devon, was on his 
way to Lyons in May 1803 when he was stopped and 
ordered to return to Paris. There he was dismayed 
to learn that all the English had been consigned to 
Verdun. He pleaded for leave to escort an invalid 
brother home, but was told by Junot that unless he 
repaired to Verdun he would be sent to the Temple 
prison. He nevertheless resolved to wait and see what 
would happen. A gendarme duly appeared with an 
order to take him to the Temple, but the name was 
misspelt, and the gendarme for a consideration with- 
drew, promising to say that he had not found the man. 
Churchill then feigned illness, and a French doctor 
prescribed for an ulcerated throat. In January 1804 
Churchill, through bribery, as is believed, was permitted 
to escort his invalid brother.^ 

Next to freedom the greatest favour was leave to 
visit or reside where the prisoners chose. Ill-health 
was naturally one of the commonest grounds for such 
applications, and naturally these were viewed with some 
scepticism. Lawrence states that Dr. Madan at Verdun 
made money by giving certificates of indisposition for 
exemption from morning roll-call. Two ex-M.P.'s, 
Nicholl and Waller, obtained permission to repair re- 
spectively to Lyons and Nimes. Nicholl's son was also 
allowed to go to a neighbouring town to marry a Miss 

^ Journal of Mary Frampton. 



CAPTIVITY 233 

Mount.^ He was ultimately released. The bookseller 
Payne was authorised to go to Plombieres and Bareges. 
We thus see that watering-places profited, as well as 
Verdun, by the detentions. 

Sir Thomas and Lady Webb were in 1809 allowed 
to go to Savoy. Lady Webb, a convert to Catholicism, 
adopted in 1813 a little EngHsh girl seemingly lost by 
her parents and found among a troop of jugglers at 
Lyons.2 The waif, after being educated and appren- 
ticed, became a nun. Macnab was permitted to study 
medicine at Montpellier. James Heath, the engraver, 
was allowed in 1810 two months at Paris to copy archi- 
tectural designs. In that year also visits to the capital 
were permitted to two clergymen, Maude and Lancelot 
Lee, as well as to Lord Shaftesbury, Captain Lovelace, 
Colonel de Blaquiere, and the brothers Tichborne, 
Henry being in ill-health. In June 1810, however, 
all or nearly all permissions for Paris were revoked. 
But in 1813 Halpin was allowed to return to Paris to 
complete his art studies. Colonel Phillips, who had 
accompanied Cook round the world, was permitted to 

^ This was not the only marriage among the captives. 

2 This was not the only case of unaccountable desertion. Edmund 
Wilson, born in Italy, was left behind in France at the age of three 
years by his English parents — there was an Andrew Wilson, an artist, 
a visitor, but surely he was not the delinquent— and was adopted by 
the Comtesse d'Aumale. He became a prominent liberal Catholic, 
and from 1829 to 1831 contributed to the Correspondant till it was 
superseded by the more advanced Avenir of Lamennais. It was, 
however, revived in 1842 and still exists. For seventeen years 'le 
sage Wilson,' as he was called on account of his habitual circumspec- 
tion, presided over Sunday gatherings of Parisian apprentices. He 
was unmarried, a sort of lay monk, was very charitable, and was 
never naturalised in France. He died in 1862. 



234 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

visit England in the summer of 1804, and General 
Scott was allowed to visit his family at Versailles; 
but on refusing to name a man who had extorted 
money from him by pretending to have obtained such 
permission he was ordered back to Verdun.^ Sir 
Thomas Clavering, whose father had been one of 
Warren Hastings' opponents at Calcutta, had married 
a Frenchwoman, the daughter of an Angers dress- 
maker, and was consequently allowed to remain at 
Orleans. There he drove his own carriage and had 
fine English horses. He was friendly with his neigh- 
bour, the actress Raucourt, and once took young 
Bonneval (afterwards Marquis and General) to her 
house, where there was much card-playing and the 
youth lost all his pocket-money. In 1808 he was 
permitted to live at St. Germain. In 1810 he sent his 
wife to England to try and effect an exchange. Mean- 
while he was at Paris, living with a Vaudeville 
actress, Arsene. She treacherously sent the police 
an anonymous letter warning them that he talked 
against Napoleon and intended to escape. Cuthbert 
Sharpe, through Regnier, Minister of Justice, was in 
1804 struck off the list of captives, allowed to live in 
Paris, and ultimately liberated. Cramer, a man of a 
good Irish Protestant family, though originally de- 
tained at Verdun, had leave, on its being known 
that he was against the war, to travel freely about 
France. Settling at Tours, he married a Mademoiselle 
Fereau and made the acquaintance of Courier, the 
future pamphleteer. He died at Florence in 1827. 

1 A. F. iv. 1498-1499. 



CAPTIVITY 285 

Edward Dillon, a naval cadet, being related to General 
Clarke, was permitted to complete his education in 
Paris. Sir John Morshead had permission to go to 
Versailles to undergo an operation, and was ultimately 
released. As near the end of the war as January 1814, 
Colonel William Cox, ex-governor of Almeida, solicited 
permission to visit Paris. 

Among the detenus permitted to visit or reside in 
Paris between 1806 and 1811 ^ were Colonel Arthur 
Annesley, Charles Jerningham, Lovell Edgeworth, Char- 
lotte, Elizabeth, and Henry (sisters and son of Sir 
William) Wolseley, John Daniel, ex-president of Douai 
College, Thomas William Atkinson, Theobald, Henry, 
and William Dillon, the Rev. Robert Bland, Count 
Daniel O'Connell, and George Woodyatt, a student from 
Westphalia, afterwards a doctor at Worcester, and 
grandfather of George Woodyatt Hastings, president 
of the Social Science Association, the M.P. who mis- 
appropriated his ward's money, making the usual plea 
that he intended to refund it. They also included 
General Lord John Murray, General Sir Edward Paget, 
Sir Herbert Croft, Archdall Cope and his brother, 
students in Paris since their childhood, Blount, another 
student, Atkinson, a medical student, John Jervis, the 
engraver, Terence M'Mahon, Christopher Potter, Smith, 
an engraver, Laurence Stoddart, a paralytic Scotsman, 
Edward Hayes, the miniature painter, and his father, 
Sir John Coghill, and Benfield, the banker. 

Although women and children were not included in 
the decree they could not always leave without diffi- 

1 F. 7, 2250. 



236 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

culty. In July 1803 some girls, who had been im- 
prudently sent to school at Rouen, had got to Calais 
on their way home when an order came to detain them 
as hostages for a young nephew and niece of Madame 
Bonaparte who had apparently been captured on their 
voyage from Martinique. There may have been some 
delay in the passage to France of this ' Master and Miss 
la Pagerie,' as the Tivies styled them; but assuredly 
England had no thought of detaining children, and it 
may be presumed that the exchange was promptly 
effected. As for women, Anne Plumptre, as free in 
her movements as at home, easily procured a passport 
in 1805 ; but her Francomania was in her favour. The 
divorced wife of Comte de Melfort (she was sister of the 
Earl of Barrymore, and her husband a descendant of 
the Scottish Drummonds) was allowed in 1810 to go to 
England with her two daughters to look after property, 
leaving behind her two sons, one page to the Emperor, 
and the other at St. Cyr military college. She is 
said to have had a liaison with the Prince Regent, 
and Melfort alleged that his marriage at the British 
Embassy had been invalid on account of the difference 
of relisrion ; but he was himself a debauchee. Arrested 
in London for debt, he found a titled lady to pay the 
amount and elope with him to France. Lady Donegal ^ 
and her sisters, Mary and Philippa Godfrey, got back 
to England as early as October 1803. Lady Maynard 
and Lady Ancram also obtained passports. A woman 
named Thompson, ninety-two years of age, captured 
in 1809 on board a merchantman which stranded off 

^ Her use of strong language earned her the nickname of Billingsgate. 



CAPTIVITY 237 

Calais, was at once, in consideration of her age, sent 
back to England. 

Sometimes women who had gone home on business 
did not find return an altogether easy matter. Thus 
Mrs. Clarke, who had obtained a passport for England 
via Holland in April 1807, was arrested by the English 
authorities on attempting to return, was sent in 
custody to London, and was interrogated on suspicion 
of being a spy in the French service. She easily 
cleared herself, but then waited to see her elder 
daughter Eleanor married to Frewen-Turner, M.P. 
for Athlone, and in 1808 she landed in France from 
Jersey. She was arrested, however, at St. L6, and 
had to give an account of herself. She stated that 
in 1791 she visited Toulouse with her daughter and 
her mother, Mrs. Hay,^ and that in 1801 she took 
her mother and a younger daughter Mary to Toulouse ; 
that they removed to Paris two days before Whit- 
worth's departure, that her visit to England had been 
purely on business, and that had she not got a passage 
from Jersey she should have tried going round by 
America. She was allowed, on her story being verified, 
to rejoin her mother and daughter.^ The latter as 
Madame Mohl, ultimately famous for her receptions 
in Paris, coquettishly concealed her age, not liking 
to confess to seniority to her German husband. At 
her death in 1883 she was ninety years of age. Miss 
Lempriere, probably sister of the author of the Classical 
Dictionary, was permitted to return. Mary Masquerier, 

^ They then saw the royal family dining in public at the Tuileries. 
2 F. 7, 3716. 



238 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

a governess, sister, doubtless, of the artist already 
named, was allowed in 1812 to embark at Morlaix 
for London. A Mrs. Cornuel in tbe same year 
obtained permission to go to England to fetch her 
two daughters, one of whom had for ten years been 
in the charge of an uncle in London, and all three 
returned on board a smuggling vessel.^ A girl named 
Warren, eleven years of age, on board a vessel captured 
by a privateer in 1805, was restored to her father, 
quartermaster at Malta. Three children named Crane, 
aged from ten to sixteen, who had been sent to school 
in Paris in 1802, but whose father could no longer 
afford to pay for their education, were permitted in 
1805 to embark at Rotterdam.- Mrs, Story and her 
four little children, also captured by a privateer, were 
liberated in December 1813, as likewise ' Madame 
Kirkpatrick' with her four children and two nieces, 
who had all been residing in Paris. We shall hear 
presently of her husband. Catherine Russell, a young 
woman captured in 1812 by a privateer and landed 
at Amsterdam, showed such despair at being parted 
from her friends that she was allowed to return to 
England.^ Mrs. Mary Bishop in 1813 had leave 
with her four daughters to pay a visit to England, 
ostensibly to obtain possession of property, but really, 
so she alleged after the Restoration when appealing 
to Louis XVIII. for recompense, on a mission from 
royalists. Lady Boyle had like permission in July 
1813, but her husband, the future Earl of Glasgow, 
could merely obtain leave to visit Paris. Occasionally 

1 F. 7, 3744. 2 Y. 7, 3750. ^ p. 7^ 3744, 



CAPTIVITY 239 

the English authorities objected to the landing of 
such passengers. Thus a Mrs. Borel, wife of a London 
merchant, was refused permission to land at Dart- 
mouth in 1813 for want of a formal permit ; she took 
passage on another vessel for Portsmouth in the hope 
of there finding less difficulty.^ The English Govern- 
ment apparently suspected that some of these arrivals 
might be spies in French pay. 

Englishwomen, sometimes accompanied by little 
children, having obtained leave from both Govern- 
ments, mostly in order to rejoin captive husbands, 
continued to land at Morlaix up to 1813. Thus 
Mrs. Dorothy Silburn, who had liberally befriended 
French' emigre priests in England, was authorised in 
1807 to settle at Koscoff, where she spent the remainder 
of her life, her tomb being still prominent in the 
old churchyard. The Countess Bruce, separated wife 
of Puschkin — he made in 1810 curious experiments 
in galvanism, as it was then called — went from Venice 
to Paris in 1811 to solicit the pardon of a negro 
servant who had been condemned to death for the 
murder of a female servant, whereas the two domestics 
had agreed to die together because they could not 
legally marry. He accordingly shot her, and wounded, 
but failed to kill, himself. Among the arrivals was 
also the notorious Lady Craven, Margravine of Anspach. 
This fair but frail lady, who had sat to Keynolds 
and Romney, had visited the Austrian and Russian 
Courts, had immediately on becoming a widow married 
the Margrave, a nephew of Frederick ii., and had 
1 F. 7, 3779. 



240 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

lived with him at Hammersmith, but had been cold- 
shouldered by London society and even by her own 
daughters. She had paid a short visit to Paris in 
1802, and she went again in 1807 to take possession 
of her second husband's property. We hear little 
more of her till her death at Naples in 1828, where 
she had settled in 1805, being joined by one of her 
sons, Keppel Craven, of whom we have already heard.^ 
Another restless woman, wife of Colonel Henry 
(brother of Viscount) Dillon, arrived in Paris in 1808, 
ostensibly to join her husband but really to bring 
over letters from royalist exiles, perhaps also to meet 
her lover, Latour du Pin. She was arrested, and 
her husband disowned her. In 1810 he notified the 
police that she had taken her children from Bordeaux 
and gone with them without his knowledge to England, 
where he feared she would divulge his offer to join 
the French army. Sir Robert Adair's French wife 
in 1808 obtained leave to remove from Vienna to 
Rheims, in order to bring up her daughters by her 
former marriage. 

The celebrated Pamela, widow of Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald, was allowed in 1810 to come to Paris, 
Napoleon directing Fouche to ' pump ' her on English 
and Irish affairs,^ as also probably on Count Stahrem- 
berg, Austrian Ambassador at London, her reputed 
lover, for she had quitted her second husband Pitcairn, 



^ Keppel, author of books on Southern Italy, died at Naples in 1851. 
He had a natural son Augustus, a diplomatist, who married Mdlle. 
de la Ferronaye, the French authoress. 

2 A. F. iv. 1504. 



CAPTIVITY 241 

American Consul at Hamburg. Her daughter by the 
latter, who survived till a few years ago, seems to have 
been left behind, either in Germany or in England. 

Julia Sayers, who had been a visitor in 1802, was 
allowed in 1805 to come over and marry Pougens, 
the blind author,^ natural son of the Prince de Conti, 
to whom she had been introduced in London in 1786. 
His fortune had disappeared in the Kevolution, and 
he had turned bookseller. She was a niece of Admiral 
Boscawen and of the Duchess of Beaufort. 

Wives were sometimes, however, refused permis- 
sion to come over and join their captive husbands. 
Margaret Stuart, who in 1806 had married Hingston 
Tuckey, both having been captured at sea, on return- 
ing in 1810 from a visit to England was unceremoni- 
ously shipped back. Sir Thomas Lavie, stranded on 
the French coast in 1806, was refused his wife's 
company, whereupon England forbade the wives of 
French prisoners to land in England. This retaliation 
apparently brought the French to reason, for as late 
as January 1813 — so little was Napoleon's fall fore- 
seen — Englishwomen landed at Morlaix.^ 

Nor did women always escape imprisonment. A 
Mrs. Moore was arrested in 1810 on the charge of 
facilitating her husband's escape from Bitche. She 
was, however, soon released. Again in 1812 an 
Englishwoman named Taylor, living at Kouen, return- 
ing to Morlaix after a visit to England, met at the 

1 A. F. iv, 1493. 

"^ A. F. iv. 1523. One of these was the wife of Montmorency- 
Morris, with her four children and two female friends, 

Q 



242 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

inn three sailors who had just been liberated from 
British pontoons. 'Ah,' said she, 'you only come 
from one prison to enter another. You will be forced 
to serve in the French navy, and will be no better 
off than in English prisons. You will never be better 
off till Bonaparte ' — here she made a gesture indicating 
the guillotine. On being arrested for this imprudent 
speech she at first denied everything, but on being 
confronted with the sailors admitted all except the 
remark on Bonaparte. She was ordered to be sent 
back to England.^ 

The banker Coutts wrote in 1810 to Lafayette, 
asking him to obtain passports for the south of 
France for his invalid daughter. Lady Bute, her 
husband^ and two children, a doctor and two servants. 
Lafayette, in endorsing the application, stated that 
Coutts was banker (he should have said son-in-law) 
to Burdett, who had rendered service to the French 
prisoners. Lady Bute and her sister had been 
educated in Paris previously to the Revolution by 
Madame Daubenton. Lord Bute died at Geneva 
in November 1814, and his remains were conveyed 
to England. Coutts also obtained permission for 
another son-in-law, Lord Guilford, to revisit France, 
but Guilford died before being able to profit by it. 
He had long suffered from injury to the spine, 
occasioned by a fall from his horse in the act of 
presenting a basket of fruit to his future wife. His 

1 A. F. iv. 1504. 

2 A. F. iv. 1504. Bute, son of George iii.'s favourite, also wrote 
himself to Talleyrand. 



CAPTIVITY 243 

brother, who succeeded to the title, established himself 
at Corfu during the Greek struggle for independence, 
and was attired like a Greek professor. 

J. Cleaver Bankes was allowed, on the recommenda- 
tion of Benjamin Constant, to come and examine 
Sanscrit manuscripts at the National Library. In 
1813 Sir Humphry Davy and his wife, with his 
secretary young Faraday, passed through Paris on their 
way to Italy. They visited the laboratory of Chevreul 
(not the future centenarian) at the Jardin des Plantes, 
and at Malmaison were shown by Josephine books and 
extracts relating to Cromwell, marked in pencil by 
Napoleon. The institute had in 1809 awarded Davy 
the £60,000 prize for electrical improvements. 

Mrs. Bathurst and her brother, George Call, were 
allowed to pass through France in 1810, on their search 
for her husband. Call on his way back solicited an 
audience of Napoleon,^ whose portrait adorned his 
snuff-box, a request which shows that he had not the 
slightest idea of accusing Napoleon. His belief, indeed, 
and that of the widow, was that Bathurst had been 
wrecked in the Baltic.^ Colonel Macleod of Colbeck, 
uncle of Lord Moira, after being liberated, actually in 
1810 asked leave to settle in France. He was described 
by the police bulletin as honest but weak-minded, and 
as having incurred unpleasantness in Scotland by his 
liking for France and his advocacy of peace. 

Shirley, a Jamaica planter, was also allowed in 1806 
to settle in the south, and Colonel Vesey, on the recom- 
mendation of the King of Prussia, was permitted to 

1 F. 7, 3768. 2 Westminster Review, 1890. 



244 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

go to Bareges on account of his wound. The British 
blockade of course barred the way by sea. The Marquis 
of Douglas in 1808 was allowed to pass through France 
on his way home from Russia, his health being unequal 
to a sea passage. Talleyrand had recommended him 
as favourable to France. Father Gordon in 1810 
solicited leave to return to Paris to urge his reinstate- 
ment as head of the Scots College. He apparently did 
not know that that institution had been fused with the 
Irish College, where Walsh had, it seems, been rein- 
stated, for in 1807 Walsh had asked permission for 
some students to come over from Ireland. Walsh 
himself, however, along with other Irish priests, was 
not allowed by the British Government to return in 
1811 to Ireland, such journeys to and fro being con- 
sidered suspicious. Five quasi-Britons — Admiral Alexis 
Greig, born in Russia of Scottish parents; Admiral 
Robert Elphinstone, a native of Plymouth; Captain 
Thomas Candler, of Dublin ; Moifat, of Dalkeith ; and 
William Crowe — all in the Russian navy, were authorised 
in 1808 to pass through France on their way back from 
Lisbon. 

Turning to involuntary visitors, precedence is due to 
Lord Blayney, who, sent with troops to Malaga in 1810, 
imprudently allowed himself to be captured by the 
French immediately on landing. His book gives an 
interesting account of his journey across Spain and 
France to Verdun. He was treated with great respect, 
and in Spain could hunt and make excursions with- 
out restriction. He does not tell us much, however, of 
life at Verdun, where he passed three years. In 1812 



CAPTIVITY 245 

England offered to exchange for him General Simon, 
who had been wounded and required mineral waters, 
but Napoleon apparently did not consider him equal 
in rank to Blayney, although assured by General Clarke 
that the latter had not held a high military post.^ 
Another general captured in Spain was Sir Edward 
Paget, who had previously lost his right arm in battle, 
but was able, after about three years' detention, to 
resume active service. He had in 1806 resigned his 
seat for Carnarvon. Lord John Murray seems like- 
wise to have been captured in Spain. Sir Thomas 
Lavie, as already mentioned, who was wrecked on the 
French coast, was for some months confined in the 
citadel of Montmedy and debarred writing materials. 
He was very kind to his fellow- captives at Verdun, and 
was allowed to go to Melun. Governor of the Royal 
Naval Asylum, he died in 1821. 

Roger Langton, captured at sea in 1808, made an 
unsuccessful attempt to escape, and remained at Verdun 
till 1814.2 Aytoun, an Edinburgh man, captured in 
an Austrian vessel in 1806 and sent to Verdun, was 
probably a kinsman — perhaps Richard the father — of 
William Edmonstoune Aytoun, the champion of Mary 
Stuart. 

Another involuntary visitor was Captain Donat 
Henchy O'Brien, of the Hussars, who was wrecked off 
Brest in February 1804, and was sent first to Bitche 
and ultimately to Verdun. Two unsuccessful attempts 
to escape — the first time he was recaptured at Etaples, 
and the second, after crouching among a drove of oxen 

1 A. F. iv. 1158. 2 F. 7^ 3750. 



246 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

to pass the Rhine, he was given up by the German 
authorities at Lindau — entailed incarceration in filthy 
and stifling casemates, but in a third attempt in 1808 
he reached the Austrian frontier and was able to resume 
service. He published a full account of his adventures,^ 
which was reprinted in 1902. Another sailor, Miller, 
captured in 1804 in the man-of-war Wolverine, escaped 
in 1811, and published an anonymous narrative. Moir, 
a naval surgeon captured at sea, was joined by his 
wife, who in 1808 gave birth to a son, destined to be- 
come the ' father ' of the Royal College of Physicians, 
and to reach the age of ninety-one. That son, John 
Moir, a prominent Free Churchman, remembered being 
taken in his mother's arms or by her hand when she 
waited on Napoleon to entreat her husband's liberation, 
but we are not told whether she was successful. Moir 
on regaining his liberty settled in Edinburgh. Francis 
Milman, brother of the future Dean, was captured in 
Spain, and detained at Verdun till January 1814,^ when 
Jenner obtained his release. Edward Boyse, midship- 
man of the Phoebe, was captured in July 1803 in a boat 
off Toulon, and conducted first to Verdun and then to 
Valenciennes ; but with two comrades he escaped from 
the latter fortress.^ 

Clandestine visitors were naturally suspected of 
being spies.* Thus the son of Dickinson, the artist, 

^ Some of these suggested incidents in Peter Simple. 

^ A. Milman, Life of Dean Milman. 

^ Narrative of Captivity. 

* Napoleon judged the English Government by his own standard, 
for, not to speak of Mehee de la Touche, he sent over to England in 
1808 Bourlac, who, pretending to be a royalist emissary, obtained 
interviews with Hawkesbury and Canning. 



CAPTIVITY 247 

ex-secretary to the Ottoman Embassy in London, 
entered France under the name of Lambert in 1805, 
apparently in order to join his father in Paris; but 
he had given up painting and had been in the employ 
of the British Government. He proved that he had 
come to see a Madame Gourbillon, of whom he had 
been enamoured in London, but the authorities sus- 
pected that he might occupy his leisure in sending 
reports to England, and he was consequently despatched 
to Verdun,^ albeit his sister was companion to Madame 
Talleyrand. But he must have been liberated, for we 
hear of another visit in 1810. 

Thomas Graham, arrested at Pepignan in 1810, had 
entered France from Spain, but having a mission to 
General Clarke and Arthur O'Connor he was released. 
Wilham Hayne, lace-maker of Nottingham, and having 
an extensive continental trade, was arrested in Paris in 
1807, having a stock of lace in his possession. What 
was done with this venturesome trader is not stated. 
Nathaniel Parker Forth, a diplomatic emissary, the 
satellite of the Duke of Orleans who procured Pamela 
for Madame de Genlis, was reported to be in Paris in 
1805, and was ordered to be watched ; ^ but if such ' a 
consummate intriguer ' had really been there he would 
certainly have been arrested and expelled. James 
Mathews, another diplomatic interloper, who had been 
arrested in Paris in 1793, landed at Havre without a 
passport in 1807 and vainly tried to pass for an 
American. The notorious swindler. Lisle Semple, was 
also reported to have been seen in Paris in 1805, yet 

1 A. F. iv. 1498. 2 A, F. iv. 1493 



248 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

this too is unconfirmed. He had been expelled as a 
spy in 1802. 

There was even a report in Paris in 1805 that six 
English oflficers had come over to witness the coronation, 
but this seems highly improbable. 

Napoleon's long arm reached not only to Hamburg 
but to Italy. In 1806 all Englishmen found there 
Avere ordered to be arrested, and Graham, consequently 
apprehended at Venice, was sent to Valenciennes. 
Edward Dodwell, living at Rome, had to apply for 
leave to visit England in order to publish a work on 
Greece. John Wilson, a native of Liverpool, residing 
in Italy, was authorised in 1810, on account of his 
health, to live at Geneva. He afterwards asked per- 
mission to become partner in a firm at Bordeaux.^ 
The Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry, would probably 
have been arrested, as he had been in 1798, had he not 
died at Albano on the 8th July 1803, before Napoleon 
had had time to look so far afield for his prey. 

Sir George Rumbold, British Minister at Hamburg 
and son of Warren Hastings' opponent at Calcutta, was 
seized by order of Napoleon in 1804. It is believed by 
the Rumbold family that this was instigated by the 
famous Pamela, Lady Edward Fitzgerald, who was then 
at Hamburg and in league with the Irish exiles there, 
to whom Rumbold's vigilant observation was very irk- 
some.2 If so, she was guilty of treachery, for she had 
been very intimate with him. 

Rumbold lived in a neighbouring village, going twice 

1 F. 7, 3116. 

" Sir Horace Rumbold, Recollections of a Diplomatist. 



CAPTIVITY 249 

a week into Hamburg on mail days. A hundred soldiers 
under Major Maison landed at night on the coast, and 
ten or twelve of them drove in two carriages to the 
spot to surround the house and prevent any alarm. 
A sentinel was placed in front of every door and window. 
On the arrival of the rest of the detachment, a German 
civilian knocked at the door and stated that he had 
brought despatches. A servant bade him deliver them 
at the window, but the door was forced open and Rum- 
bold was arrested in his bed. He expected nothing 
less than to be shot, as the Due d'Enghien had been 
six months before, but Maison assured him that his life 
was safe. All his papers were seized, and these were 
expected to implicate the British Government in plots 
to assassinate Napoleon, an expectation, however, which 
was not realised. The Prince Regent, moreover, ac- 
cording to a police bulletin of 1805, referring to such 
plots, had said, ' Let us meet Bonaparte like men, not 
like assassins.' 1 Rumbold, on being taken to Paris, 
was induced on the promise of the restitution of his 
papers to sign an engagement never to approach on 
non-British territory within a hundred miles of any 
post occupied by French troops. In Paris, if we may 
credit a police report, his terror revived. He asked for 
time to pray and to write to his family, adding that for 
eighteen months he had been disgusted with politics, 
and but for his children's interests would have thrown 
up his appointment. He passed ten days in the Temple, 
and here is the description given of him : — 

' 5 ft. 11 in. Hair brownish grey. Eyebrows dark grey. 
1 A. F. iv. 1494 ; F. 7, 3750. 



250 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Forehead ordinary. Eyes greyish brown. Nose short, slim 
above and rather thick below. Mouth medium. Lips thick. 
Chin round. Face oval and full. A small mark on the left 
cheek.' 

The King of Prussia had remonstrated against such 
a violation of German territory, and had ordered his 
Ambassador to Paris to demand his passports unless 
Rumbold were released. Accordingly the preposterous 
intention of trying him for conspiracy, if ever enter- 
tained, was abandoned, and he was escorted to Cher- 
bourg, where, not without renewed apprehensions of 
being shot, he was handed over to a British frigate. 
He had already repented of signing the engagement, 
an act of cowardice, he said, tantamount to resignation. 
The gendarme major told him he might keep the 
matter secret, but Rumbold replied that he should be 
bound to inform his Government. He also expressed 
regret at his family affairs being pried into in his 
papers.! Rumbold, if the French reports are to be 
trusted, certainly showed pusillanimity, but the recent 
fate of the Due d'Enghien was in his mind. The pro- 
mise of restoring his papers was not fulfilled, and being 
censured by the English Government for the engage- 
ment entered into by him, he offered to go back to 
France and revoke that engagement. This, of course, 
was not allowed. In the following spring he repaired 
to Berlin to thank the King of Prussia for his inter- 
vention, and he followed the royal family in their 
retreat to Memel. There, tended by Prince Augustus 
when attacked with fever, he expired in December 1807. 

^ Grasilier, Enlevement de Rumbold, Paris, 1901. 



CAPTIVITY 251 

His widow in 1810 married Sir Sidney Smith, who like- 
wise had had experience of the Temple prison. Both 
she and Sir Sidney ended their days in Paris. 

In 1876 Sir Horace Rumbold obtained permission 
to inspect his grandfather's confiscated papers in the 
French Archives, but found the family matters in 
them very meagre, while he suspected that the political 
portions had been withheld from him.^ 

Talleyrand, in a diplomatic circular justifying such 
high-handed acts, charged England with prostituting 
the functions of ambassadors by making them instigate 
the assassination of the Emperor; but Lord Hawkes- 
bury in reply, while indignantly denying the charge, 
insisted that a belligerent was entitled to have dealings 
with malcontents, and he twitted France with incite- 
ment of Irish rebellions. Napoleon's evident maxim, 
however, was that all was fair on his own side, and it 
must be confessed that, whereas no Irishman proposed 
to assassinate George iii., French malcontents looked 
for no success unless through Napoleon being kidnapped 
or murdered. 

A Colonel Butler was also arrested at Hamburg in 
November 1806. In the French Dragoons until the 
Revolution, he had for eleven or twelve years, along 
with Dutheil, been an agent for the Bourbons and had 
paid secret visits to Paris. Two of his many children 
were there and were rich with their mother's pro- 
perty. What became of him is not stated. Possibly 
he escaped. 

James Smithson, natural son of the Duke of 

^ National Review, August 1903. 



252 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Northumberland, born in France in 1765, and future 
founder of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, 
was likewise arrested at Hamburg in 1809, but at the 
solicitation of Banks received a passport for England. 
He had visited Paris in 1791, when he wrote — 'The 
office of king is not yet abolished, but they daily feel 
the inability or rather the great inconvenience of con- 
tinuing it. May other nations at the time of their 
reforms be wise enough to cast off at first the con- 
temptible incumbrance ! ' Smithson, who must by this 
time have been sadly disillusioned with the Revolution, 
died at Genoa in 1829, having mostly spent his later 
years in Paris. 

George Sinclair, eldest son of Sir John, the great 
agriculturist, in 1806, at the age of sixteen, was arrested 
by the French as a spy, having been found between the 
French and German lines just before the battle of Jena. 
Sinclair, who became a general and lived till 1868, 
published in 1826 in the Representative an interesting 
account of his interview at Auma with Napoleon, before 
whom he was taken, together with his companion, a 
German named Rigel, by Count Frohberg. He found 
Napoleon in a dressing-gown and white night-cap, and 
he was required not only to show that he had been on 
purely private business, but to trace all his movements on 
a map and to answer questions as to the German troops 
through which he had passed. ' All Napoleon's ques- 
tions,' he says, * were remarkable by their perfect clear- 
ness. He omitted nothing that was necessary ; he asked 
nothing superfluous.' 'What guarantee can I have,' 
said Napoleon, ' of the truth of your story ? Englishmen 



CAPTIVITY 253 

do not usually travel on foot and without a servant and 
in such, a dress.' Sinclair was wearing a coarse brown 
overcoat. ' It is true, sire/ he replied, ' that my conduct 
may seem a little odd, but imperative circumstances 
and the impossibility of procuring a horse forced me 
to do all that I have done.' He produced some family 
letters, which Napoleon asked Frohberg to skim, and 
one of them was from Sir John Sinclair, commending 
his study of Greek and Latin and exhorting him to 
master German and French. Thereupon Napoleon, 
softening his tone, said, ' So you have learned Latin and 
Greek. What authors have you read ? ' Surprised at 
such a question, Sinclair named Homer, Thucydides, 
Cicero, and Horace. It was well he could not or did 
not name Tacitus, the object of Napoleon's aversion. 
'Very good, very good,' he rejoined, and turning to 
General Berthier, he said, ' I do not think this young 
man is a spy, but the other is probably less innocent, 
and they must be kept together to avoid suspicion.' 
A nod indicated that the interview was over, and 
Sinclair, bowing, withdrew. ' When taken before him,' 
he writes, ' I had the strongest prejudice against him. 
I considered him the enemy of my country and the 
oppressor of the rest of Europe. On quitting him, the 
grace and fascination of his smile and that superior 
intelligence which illumined his face had entirely sub- 
jugated me.' Napoleon directed Frohberg to tell the 
young man he was much pleased with the frankness of 
his answers. Rigel in like manner exonerated himself, 
and both, subjected to a few days' honourable detention, 
were liberated after the battle of Jena, a place which 



254 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Sinclair liad passed on his route and had pointed out to 
Napoleon on the map. 

Should we reckon among the British — she was at 
any rate among the notable — involuntary visitors the 
Countess of Albany, widow of the Young Pretender, 
quasi- widow of the poet Alfieri, and quasi-wife of Fabre 
of Montpellier ? She started from Florence for Paris 
in 1806, with the view of publishing Alfieri's works, 
but turned back at Turin on finding that Fran9ois 
Xavier Fabre, as an emigre, would not be allowed to 
re-enter France. In the autumn of 1809, however, 
Napoleon required her to come to Paris to exculpate her- 
self from a charge of intrigues with England. All that 
she had really done had been to refuse to receive Clarke 
when French Minister at Florence, and to apply to the 
English Government for an annuity to compensate the 
one lost by the death of her brother-in-law. Cardinal 
York, the titular Henry ix. She had accordingly been 
granted £1000 a year. She easily cleared herself, and 
Napoleon seems to have been a little ashamed of dis- 
turbing so inoffensive a woman. He jestingly told her 
that her influence on Florentine society hampered the 
fusion desired by him between Tuscans and French. 
This, he said, was why he had summoned her to live 
in Paris, where she would have more ample opportunity 
of gratifying her artistic tastes. The interview lasted 
only a quarter of an hour. Napoleon gave her his box 
at the theatre one night that she might see Talma. It 
was not till the end of 1810 that she was permitted 
to return to Florence.^ A letter addressed to her in 

^ Archives du Nord de la France, iii. 449. 



CAPTIVITY 255 

1814 piquantly contrasted her husband's expulsion 
from France in 1748 with her own enforced residence 
there, adding, ' You have left many regrets in the great 
Babylon.' 

Such of the English as were allowed to inhabit Paris, 
the permits for which, however, were, as we have seen, 
grudgingly granted and liable to be cancelled by whole- 
sale, had the slender consolation of reflecting that 
they were in the 'hub' of the universe, for Paris in 
the height of Napoleon's rule was more the centre of 
fashion and business than it has ever been since. It 
swarmed with Jews — bankers, jewellers, and merchants 
— to whom the war afforded many opportunities of 
enriching themselves. It also swarmed with adven- 
turers of all nationalities, so that in February 1803 the 
regulations as to visitors, whether French or foreign, 
were made almost as stringent as those issued during 
the Revolution. A list of the inmates had not indeed, 
as then, to be placarded outside every house, but every 
householder was required to notify the police of the 
arrival of any visitor or lodger and to send in the pass- 
port. This had to be applied for within three days by 
such guest or lodger, to whom a permit to stay in or 
quit Paris was then granted. A foreigner's permit was 
conditional on the certificate of his ambassador, or, in 
default of an ambassador, by a banker or two well-known 
citizens.^ 

On the other hand there was no lack of celebrities 
or of men who interest us on account of distinguished 
descendants. Let us begin with Pius vii., the first 

1 Moniteur, February 14, 1803. 



256 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Pope who had touched French soil since the return to 
Rome from Avignon in 1408. Like the Doge of Genoa 
at Versailles, he must have thought himself the most 
surprising object in Paris, Manzoni, the Italian poet 
and novelist, Oersted, the Danish scientist, and Francis 
Arago, the future astronomer, whose family had sought 
at Perpignan a refuge from Spanish commotions, may 
next be noted, Spurzheim, the phrenologist, comes 
considerably lower down in eminence. The statesmen 
include Baron Hardenberg, destined to regenerate 
Prussia, and Count Nesselrode, the future author of 
the Holy Alliance and the Crimean War. The Poles 
include Prince Constantine Czartoryski, who, though 
a member of a great patriotic family, served in the 
Russian army. Count John Wielopolski, and Stanislas 
Wolowski, probably a collateral ancestor of the econo- 
mist who sat in the French National Assembly of 
1871. Marquis Emanuel del Campo, Spanish Minister 
of Foreign Affairs, ex-ambassador at London and in 
1795 at Paris, was the natural son of a Spanish grandee, 
an envoy also to London, by an Englishwoman named 
Field, a name which he had turned into Campo. He 
commenced life in an orphanage. James and Julius 
Beccaria were probably kinsmen of the Milanese philo- 
sopher. Count Tolstoi, the Russian ambassador, and 
Andrew Tolstoi, apparently his son, may have been 
ancestors of the great novelist, Ferdinand de H6redia 
was probably the father of the French Minister of 
Public Works in 1887, and grandfather of the acade- 
mician and poet. Dias and Emanuel Oliveira, the 
former a merchant at Oporto, the latter a doctor, were 



CAPTIVITY 257 

probably ancestors of the Benjamin Oliveira who in 
the House of Commons anticipated Cobden by ad- 
vocating reduced tariffs on foreign wines. Joseph 
Samuda, a Barcelona merchant, was probably uncle 
of the great East London shipbuilder and M.P. Philip 
Gavazzi, an Italian merchant, may have been the father 
of the anti-papal ecclesiastic who joined Garibaldi in 
Naples and died in 1889. 

Englishmen domiciled, if not naturalised, abroad 
were not subject to detention, which indeed was not 
prospective in the decree, but was limited to persons 
then on French soil. The Berlin decree of 1807 
ordered, it is true, the capture of all British subjects 
irrespective of sex or age found in territories occupied 
by French or allied troops; but this does not seem 
to have been enforced. Hence the police registers^ 
show visits to Paris between 1806 and 1813 by English- 
men settled on the Continent, but it is not always 
easy to distinguish these from men of English names, 
descendants of Jacobites or other emigrants, born 
abroad. In any case the registers are evidence that 
British subjects or men of British descent were 
sprinkled all over Europe, some as soldiers of fortune, 
others as manufacturers or artisans, and a few as land- 
owners. Thus the register of Spaniards gives us 
Colonel Peter Aylmer, Patrick MacMahon, a merchant 
at San Sebastian, Thomas Moore, a landowner born 
in Spain, William Mulvey, a native of Cadiz, O'Farrill, 
Ambassador to Berlin, William Stirling, a merchant 
born at Barcelona, Charles Willcox, a landowner also 

1 F. 7, 2241-56. 
R 



258 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

born there, and Colonel Charles Augustus Joseph 
Walsh de Serrant, one of whose family conveyed 
the Young Pretender to Scotland in 1745. The 
so-called Portuguese included Henry Gallwey and 
Joseph O'Moran, latter a commercial traveller. 

The Dutchmen comprise General O'Connor, a native 
of Holland, Benjamin John Hopkinson, a domiciled 
landowner, and Robert Twiss, a merchant, apparently 
the father of Francis and Richard Twiss, and the 
grandfather of Horace Twiss. The Belgians were 
considered Frenchmen, or we should have heard of 
William Cockerill, one of the three sons of the man 
who founded the famous ironworks at Seraing. The 
Prussians and Poles, who are classed together, comprise 
William Flint and Augustus and John Simpson, 
merchants, Catherine and Richard Fitzgerald, land- 
owners, natives of Dublin, Samuel Turner, 'president 
of canton,' whatever that may mean, also from Dublin, 
and Baron Butler, a major captured in the field. 
Among Danes are Edmund de Bourke, Ambassador 
to Spain, and David Turnbull, a manufacturer at 
Altona. The Russians include Baron John Richard 
Bourke, Reuben Beasley, a merchant, Dr. William 
Birt, and William Lind, surgeon, both natives of 
St. Petersburg. 

Among Swiss are John Archer and Walter and 
David Johnston, two sons of a wine merchant at 
Bordeaux who had not yet been naturalised in France, 
but was unmolested and allowed in 1812 to visit Paris, 
Last but not least is William Kirkpatrick, a son of 
the Scottish (Closeburn) baronet, who was a wine- 



CAPTIVITY 259 

merchant at Malaga, and had married Fran9oise de 
Gr6vign6e, daughter of a Walloon, also settled at 
Malaga. Kirkpatrick, who had been appointed Consul 
at Hamburg by the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, was 
in Paris in 1808 and was anxious to return to Malaga, 
but the French police suspected him of relations 
with England and had arrested his partner TurnbuU. 
His daughter Maria Emanuele, born in 1796, was 
destined to be the mother of the Empress Eugenie, 
while her mother's sister, wife of Mathieu de 
Lesseps, was destined to be the mother of Ferdinand 
de Lesseps. 

There were of course in eleven years deaths, and 
even tragical deaths, among the captives. The Marquis 
and Marchioness of Tweeddale were allowed to visit 
Paris in November 1803, but were soon relegated to 
Verdun, and the gendarme who escorted them thither 
insisted, Lawrence tells us, on riding inside the 
carriage and even on dining with them. Lady Tweed- 
dale, sister of Lord Lauderdale, died at Verdun in 
1804, and her husband, while awaiting permission 
to have her buried in England, was also taken ill, 
and died two months afterwards,^ Napoleon's offer, 
' as a mark of respect for Fox,' of twelve months' 
leave, came too late. James Parry, ex- editor of the 
Courier, had been imprisoned in 1799 for six months 
for an article animadverting on the Tsar, whom the 
British Government then wished to court; he had 
sold his newspaper to Daniel Stuart, proprietor of 
the Morning Post, and in 1802 had settled at Aries. 

^ Both bodies were conveyed to England. 



260 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH YISITOKS 

Though for three years a paralytic he was mercilessly 
ordered to Verdun and died theie. His young son 
was adopted by Ginguene, the eminent literary critic. 

James Payne, the bookseller, died in Paris in 1809 
at the age of forty-three, leaving a young widow who 
went back to England in 1811. She was escorted 
by the Widmers, nephews of the calico-printer 
Oberkampf, who thus returned the long compulsory 
stay with their uncle of Robert Hendry. Hendry was 
a Glasgow dyer, whom Napoleon on a visit to 
Oberkampfs calico-factory allowed to return home, 
nominally for a visit; but this was doubtless an 
euphemism for release. John Leatham, formerly of 
Madras, died at Nantes in 1811. Peter Colombine, 
of London, died in Paris in 1813. He was probably 
the brother of the Norwich alderman known to Mrs. 
Opie, who in 1802 was defrauded of his property and 
reduced to accepting an annuity of £100 from the 
Corporation of that city. 

The Rev. J. Bentinck, an Oxonian who is said to 
have been promised a bishopric, died at Paris in June 
1804. The Rev. John Dring, rector of Heathfield, 
Sussex, died at Orleans in 1806. Coulson Walhope, 
ex-M.P., was subjected to special surveillance, apparently 
on account of a report, doubtless calumnious, that 
he had visited France just after Napoleon's return 
from Egypt with the design of shooting him. Walhope 
likewise ended his days at Verdun in 1807, shortly 
after giving a dinner-party. A doctor captured at 
sea committed suicide in 1805, leaving a bottle 
inscribed, ' No more medicine after this.' A third 



CAPTIVITY 261 

clergyman, White of Lancaster, died at Verdun in 1806, 
and a fourth, Annesley, at Geneva in 1807, his widow 
being then allowed a passport for England. He was 
probably a kinsman of the colonel already mentioned, 
but I cannot trace him in the Annesley pedigree. 
Thomas Talbot, aged twenty-eight, suffocated himself 
by charcoal at Paris in 1806, leaving a letter to his 
mother with a list of his debts (probably at cards) 
which he begged her to discharge.^ Dr. Walter Kirby 
also died at Paris. A man named Burgh or Burke, 
on account of gambling debts, shot himself at Paris in 
August 1813. 

A considerable number of incurable prisoners had 
been sent back by England, and in 1810 there were 
negotiations for an exchange. Colin Alexander Mac- 
kenzie^ was sent to Morlaix for that purpose, with 
William Dickinson as his secretary. He went on 
to Paris, to witness Napoleon's marriage festivities. 
France proposed an exchange en masse, with pay- 
ment of a sum of money to cover the difference in 
numbers. On this being declined, she suggested an 
exchange, man for man, grade for grade, and offered 
to throw 20,000 Spaniards into the bargain. She 
wished 3000 Frenchmen to be exchanged for 1000 
EngHsh and 2000 Spaniards. England offered to give 
3000 French for 17,000 Hanoverians, but France 
insisted on 6000 of the former. As for the detenus, 
the British Government, reluctantly waiving the legality 
of their arrest, proposed that Lord Lovaine should 
be exchanged for a general, sons of peers or privy 

1 A. F. iv. 1498. 2 General in 1814 ; died in 1815. 



262 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

councillors for colonels or navy captains, baronets and 
knights for officers, untitled gentlemen for captains 
of tlie line or naval lieutenants, tradesmen for subal- 
terns, servants and mechanics for privates or seamen. 
There was a difficulty, however, as to Hanoverians 
and Spaniards, and no agreement was arrived at. 
Mackenzie, who had arrived on the 24th April, accord- 
ingly left on the 6 th November. During his stay 
at Morlaix his movements had been closely watched, 
and objection was taken to his wolf-hunting expedi- 
tions, as though these might screen confabulations with 
royalists or observations on privateers. There had been, 
however, and continued to be, individual hberations. 
England continued to send back prisoners incurably 
ill, and on the other hand a sailor who had become 
blind was released in 1809 by France. He took with 
him a book in which a number of Verdun captives 
had written messages to friends. Powell, vicar of 
Abergavenny, having shown much kindness to French 
prisoners there, Clarke recommended, let us hope 
successfully, the exchange of an English sailor in 
whom the vicar was interested.^ Admiral Villeneuve 
in 1806 was exchanged at Morlaix, but unwilling to 
face Napoleon after his defeat, he committed suicide 
at Rennes on the way to Paris. There was also an 
offer to exchange Admiral Jurien de la Graviere for 
two colonels, but this was not accepted. The balance 
of prisoners was always largely against France, while 
the balance of escapes was — shall we say in favour ? — 
of France. Thus in 1812 the British Government 

1 A. F. iv. 1158. 



CAPTIVITY 263 

published a list of 270 escapes and 590 attempted 
escapes by French, officers, whereupon the Moniteur 
gave a list of 355 EngUsh escapes, which it was urged 
was a much greater proportionate number. Sir James 
Craufurd figured at the head of the list. But the 
great majority of these English fugitives were officers 
or sailors of merchant vessels captured at sea after 
the resumption of hostilities. Some of the French 
escapes were effected through a noted English 
smuggler named Kobinson ; we do not hear of his 
assisting any of his own countrymen, as this would 
obviously have stopped his favourable reception in 
France. 

Applications for release or for permission to visit 
England latterly became numerous. Release was be- 
sought in many instances on the plea of age and 
infirmity (and we may suppose that doctors were 
complaisant in granting such certificates) or for having 
rescued French citizens from fire or shipwreck. Two 
sailors who in a rescue from the waves had actually 
been captured had irresistible claims not so much to 
clemency as to gratitude. Poor Colonel Cope's botani- 
cal studies, moreover, had not apparently warded off 
insanity, on which ground his sister in 1813 petitioned 
for his release. William Story, the chemist, had 
reached the age of sixty-three, and Napoleon's decree 
had fixed sixty as the limit of detention. He applied 
for six months' leave of absence to take possession of 
property bequeathed to him. Viscountess Kirkwall 
urged that unless her brother, whose father's death had 
made him Lord De Blaquiere, was allowed to settle 



264 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

affairs in person, the family would be ruined. Lord 
Lovaine, with his sons Algernon and Percy, born in 
France, likewise petitioned for a business visit.^ Sir 
Michael Cromie in 1811, pleading that he had been a 
friend of Fox, and had purchased property in France, 
asked leave to go to England to his daughter's wedding.^ 
Samuel Hayes, who in 1802 had come over with his 
children that they might learn French, was allowed in 
1813, having become nearly blind, to return home. As 
late as the 18th March 1814, sixteen released prisoners 
embarked at Morlaix. 

Curiously enough, an escaped prisoner was sent back 
by the English Government on the very eve of the 
termination of the war. It is the only case on record. 
A Lieutenant Sheehy, aged twenty-seven, of the 89th 
Infantry, had escaped from Verdun in October 1813, 
but the Prince Regent and the Commander-in-Chief, 
rebuking him for breach of parole, despatched him by 
flag of truce to Morlaix, where he arrived on the 5 th 
March 1814. The Morlaix commissary reported that 
he denounced the Prince Regent as a sot, and that if 
he had talked like this in England it might account 
for his being returned, but that such talk might be a 
blind for some secret mission. Pending instructions 
from Paris, Sheehy was kept in custody, and we hear 
no more of him.^ 

The failure of the Mackenzie negotiations must have 
been a terrible disappointment for captives who had 
already waited nine years and a half As late as 1812 
there was so little prospect of deliverance that a 

1 A. F. iv. 1158. 2 ^, Y. iv. 1158. « F. 7, 3882. 



CAPTIVITY 265 

prisoner at Briangon amused himself by scratching a 
sun-dial on a slate, appending to the motto 'Rule 
Britannia' imprecations against Napoleon.^ In April 
1813, twenty-five chests of Bibles and Testaments had 
been sent by a flag of truce, apparently by the Bible 
Society, to Morlaix for distribution among the captives. 
They were detained at the custom-house pending a 
decision, and we do not hear the result,^ but in any case 
the books could scarcely have reached their intended 
recipients. 

Yet although nobody foresaw the end of the war, 
Napoleon seems to have shown a little more leniency, 
while England in 1813 sent back 8000 invalided 
prisoners, and agreed, moreover, to occasional exchanges 
even of soldiers for civilians. Thus in 1812 she offered 
to exchange a French captain for the banker Boyd, but 
this offer must have been declined, for in 1814 Boyd 
pleaded the loss of the sight of one eye as ground for 
repeating it.^ Release must soon have ensued without 
the necessity of an exchange. In December 1813, 
fourteen English doctors were exchanged for French 
prisoners, and we may hope that these included Moir, 
Armstrong, Watt, Campbell, Hogarth, and Jones, whose 
volunteer services to the French wounded had been 
notified to Napoleon by General Clarke, as a hint for 
their release.* 

The allies having entered France on the north-east 
and Wellington on the south, the Yerdun, Arras, and 
other captives were removed further inland. Napoleon, 

^ Interm4diaire, February 10, 1902. 
2 A. F. iv. 1527. ^ A. F. iv. 1158. * Ibid. 



266 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITOKS 

writing on the 11th January 1814 to Clarke, said, 'I 
suppose you have removed the English from Verdun ' ; 
but it was not till the following day that the first 
detachment started for Blois. Prisoners with means 
provided their own vehicles or horses, but others, 
mostly captains and officers of merchantmen, seem to 
have been marched on foot. Most of them. Lord 
Blayney ^ says, were accompanied by French mistresses 
who had acquired a surprising mastery of English 
sailors' oaths. A second detachment set out next day. 
This sudden removal had caused consternation, for 
though many had been captured during the war, many 
others had been at Yerdun ever since 1803, and had got 
to feel at home there. Those, moreover, just under 
sixty when originally detained, were getting into years 
and disinclined to stir. Logically, of course, they 
should have been released on reaching that age, but 
logic was not to be looked for from Napoleon. Trades- 
men and house-owners, moreover, had given numerous 
prisoners credit, yet the latter, if out of funds, had 
perforce to leave their creditors in the lurch. They 
could not wait for remittances, the order for departure 
in three days being imperative. Some, indeed, borrowed 
money of friends, but when the Verdun shopkeepers 
collected at the gate to make a last demand for their 
dues, some of the prisoners who could have paid coolly 
showed their purses to their creditors and then re- 
turned them to their pockets, sarcastically remarking 

^ He stopped a night at Nohant on his way to Blois, and again on 
repairing to Paris. Did he notice there a tomboy ten years old 
destined to be famous as George Sand ? 



CAPTIVITY 267 

that the Cossacks would discharge the debt. Five Arras 
captives made their way to the coast in lieu of going 
south, but finding no boat gave themselves up. Two 
others succeeded in their purpose. On the way to 
Blois, the younger child of Tuckey fell ill and died. 
On reaching their supposed destination, the prisoners 
were ordered on to Gu6ret. That town on the 11th of 
March 1814 had no less than 1064 English prisoners. 
Tidings of Wellington's advance naturally created 
restlessness among them. Sixty-four escaped from the 
convent at Perigueux, to which they had been con- 
signed, although the officers had some days before, lest 
they should head a rising, been transferred to Cahors. 
A hundred and one escaped in a body from Angouleme, 
and as many more, under a negro named Louis, con- 
spired to follow suit, but were detected in time. The 
gendarmerie captain recommended their removal to 
spots more out of reach of the English army.^ There 
had, moreover, been escapes on the way south. In 
February seven men, ordered from Arras to Tours, gave 
their convoy the slip, but were arrested in a barn near 
St. Valery. Five other fugitives were apprehended 
near Montreuil. A Frenchman at Dunkirk was arrested 
for offering to facilitate escapes. 

News soon arrived of Napoleon's abdication. The 
Bitche prisoners, who had been sent to Chatelle- 
rault, would but for that event have been sent on to 
Rennes. A few of the English in Paris had obtained 
permission to remain, and were there witnesses of the 
short siege and the entrance of the allies. One of these 
1 F. 7, 3782. 



268 NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITORS 

was James Richard Underwood, for whom the 
dethroned Josephine had interceded. He published 
in the London Magazine an account of the siege and 
capitulation. 

Article 3 of the treaty of peace of 1814 stipulated 
' that the respective prisoners of war shall be bound to 
pay before their departure from the place of their 
detention any private debts which they may have 
contracted there, or at least to give satisfactory 
security.' This doubtless took effect in England, where 
prisoners could not leave without the knowledge or 
sanction of the authorities, but in France, occupied 
by foreign armies, there were obviously no means of 
enforcing it. Hence it is not surprising to find that 
at Verdun there were indignant creditors. We do not 
hear of complaints in any other town, but at Bitche 
and other fortresses the captives were lodged and 
victualled by the French Government, and though 
clothes must have worn out, the shopkeepers were 
probably chary of giving credit, while the captives on 
parole in Paris, Orleans, and other towns were men of 
means and doubtless of a high sense of honour. The 
eight or eleven hundred prisoners at Verdun, on the 
other hand, were of all sorts and conditions. Some 
could not, others would not, pay. When, therefore, 
Verdun learned that the sixty millions paid by France 
to England to satisfy claims for compensation for 
confiscation had left a balance of nine milHons, it 
perceived an opportunity for sending in its bill. What 
could be more legitimately paid out of this balance 
than the three and a half million debts of the 



CAPTIVITY 269 

prisoners ? Negotiations were carried on from 1837, 
and in October 1839, doubtless by the advice of the 
French Government, Routhier, a barrister, empowered to 
represent the creditors, went over to London. On a 
second visit he was accompanied by four townsmen, 
themselves apparently creditors. The memorial drawn 
up by them said : — 

' During twelve years' residence in a town in which they 
were debarred the opportunity of procuring aid from their 
families and their country,^ the English prisoners could not 
but contract debts and obligations, and they will doubtless 
acknowledge that the kindness and generosity of the inhabit- 
ants may have helped them to forget the disasters and 
misfortunes of war. ... At the moment of the invasion 
the majority of the prisoners waited neither for official 
orders to depart nor for the conclusion of treaties. They 
quitted the country with all the facilities which circum- 
stances naturally afforded. By depriving the creditors of 
their pledge, by sending the general officers, some to India, 
others to China, in the service of His Britannic Majesty, and 
thus rendering it impossible for the inhabitants of Verdun 
to sue their debtors, the English Government made itself 
responsible for the payment of the debts. The inhabitants 
put forward their claim from the outset, and from the outset 
notes on the subject were exchanged between the different 
Ministers. ... If in that list there should prove to be a single 
usurious debt, one that cannot be verified by proper vouchers, 
let it be immediately rejected. . . . The number of prisoners 
always exceeded 1200, and frequently amounted to 2000.' ^ 

The memorial asked for an instalment of 5000 

^ This, as we have seen, is not quite accurate. 

- acclamation de Verdun. The number never exceeded 1100. 



270 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

francs 'to relieve the most urgent cases of distress' 
pending examination of the claims by a mixed com- 
mission. 

The Times of October 18, 1839, says :— 

*A deputation from the inhabitants of Verdun in France 
has just arrived in London to claim the payment of 
£140,000, the amount of private debts incurred by English 
prisoners detained in that city during the war. The 
deputation, composed of MM. Routhier, Quentin, Leorat, 
Mass6, and Trebout has, we are assured, been most kindly 
received by Lord Palmerston, who seems to have impressed 
the members of the deputation with the belief that no time 
will be lost in submitting the demand of the inhabitants of 
Verdun to a mixed commission charged with the liquidation 
of the debts. Marshal Soult,^ we understand, has written 
personally to Lord Palmerston to suggest that a part of the 
nine million francs (the unappropriated balance of a sum of 
sixty millions paid by France in 1815 in liquidation of the 
claims of British subjects) ought to be applied in payment to 
the inhabitants of Verdun.' 

But nothing came of this mission, and we hear of 
no further attempt by Verdun to obtain satisfaction. 
Thus ends the history of these involuntary guests. 

^ Then Ambassador at London. 



TWO RESTOKATIONS 

The Restoration — Aristocrats and Commoners — Unwelcome 
Gruests — Wellington in Danger — Misgivings — Napoleonic Em- 
blems — Spectacles — Visits to Elba — Egerton's Siege — St. 
Helena — Eyewitnesses and Survivors. 

While the fall of Napoleon thus enabled numbers 
of Englishmen to return home, it allowed and tempted 
a smaller but yet considerable number to make or 
renew acquaintance with France. According to 
Wansey, there were four or five hundred of these/ 
scarcely any, however, staying more than a fortnight 
or three weeks. The through fare from London was 
now £5. The visitors had the interesting spectacle 
of the restoration of the Bourbons, while the very 
few who made a more lengthened stay witnessed also 
the Hundred Days' reign of Napoleon, and his second 
and final fall. Never surely in Europe in modern 
times were more startling vicissitudes crowded into 
so brief a period. Even Spain with its pronunciami- 
entos was not destined to present such a kaleidoscope. 
For a parallel we must go forward to the Central 
American republics or backward to the time when 
the pretorians made and unmade Roman emperors. 

^ A Paris paper absurdly estimated them in October 1814 at 12,000. 

271 



272 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

These visitors, like those who hurried over in 
1802, included all sorts and conditions of men. There 
were statesmen like Castlereagh, anxious to weigh 
the chances of stability of the reinstated dynasty. 
He paid two visits, the first in August 1814 on his 
way to the Vienna Congress, the second in February 
1815. It was probably on the first visit that Ney, 
dining with him and with officers of the allied armies, 
had the bad taste or want of tact to argue that an 
invasion of England, which he said he had strenuously 
urged on Napoleon, would certainly have succeeded. 
There were subordinate officials Hke WeUesley Pole, 
Master of the Mint and brother to Wellington, and 
Croker who, as we learn from the police bulletins, 
preferred a complaint that American privateers were 
still being sheltered at Bordeaux. It was not at 
this visit but at a subsequent one in July 1815 that 
Croker inspected the memorable scenes of the Revolu- 
tion, discovered in the possession of Marat's old 
printer Colin a large collection of pamphlets, and 
was introduced by him to Marat's sister, whom he 
found as repulsive-looking as her brother. ' Cohn,' 
said Croker, 'had in some small dark rooms up two 
or three flights of stairs an immense quantity of 
brochures of the earlier days of the Revolution. What 
he had least of were the works of Marat, even those 
which he himself printed, which he accounted for 
naturally enough by saying that there were times 
in which it might be somewhat hazardous to possess 
them.' Croker induced the British Museum in 1817 
to purchase the collection, and he afterwards formed 



TWO EESTORATIONS 273 

a collection of his own which ultimately had the 
same destination. There were politicians like Grey, 
F. J. Kobinson, Fazakerley, Grattan, Whitbread, and 
Brougham. Brougham attended the sittings of the 
Institute, of which he was afterwards to be an 
associate, saw Laplace, and had a long conversation 
with Carnot. This was his first visit to France, for 
his step-grandson Sir Edward Malet is mistaken in 
stating that he once heard Mirabeau speak. ' I never,' 
says Brougham, ' spent any time by half so delightful. 
My fortnight passed like a day.' Are we to attribute 
to this visit the birth of an infant afterwards known 
as Madame Blaze de Bury, who died in 1894 at the 
age of eighty, and who in spite of her alleged birth 
as a Stewart in Scotland was believed to be Brougham's 
daughter by a French mother ? She strongly re- 
sembled him both physically and mentally. Her 
husband had an English mother named Bury ; her 
daughter, like herself a writer, died in December 1902. 

There was Thelwall, the acquitted Eadical of 1794, 
who had temporarily renounced politics and taken 
to the cure of stammering. There was Arthur Thistle- 
wood, who, it is said, had visited Paris in 1794, and 
who soon entered into conspiracies, the last of which, 
named from Cato Street, resulted in his conviction 
and execution in 1820. He was decidedly an excep- 
tion among the visitors, yet the Paris air may have 
helped to lead him astray, for it was an atmosphere 
of conspiracy. 

There were philosophers and historians such as 
Sir James Mackintosh, who was anxious to explore 

s 



274 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

the French archives, taking ten copyists with him ; but 
these formidable preparations not unnaturally occa- 
sioned obstruction from a suspicious curator, Hauterive,^ 
so that Wellington had to urge that no mischief could 
result from the disclosure of political secrets half a 
century old. Mackintosh's son-in-law, Claudius James 
Rich, the traveller, accompanied him, and the tran- 
scripts then made are now in the British Museum. 
They are limited to the times of the Stuarts. 

Archibald Alison, the future historian, accompanied 
by a fellow Scot and fellow historian, Patrick Fraser 
Tytler, also went in May 1814, returning by Flanders. 
It is not clear from their joint narrative whether both 
or Tytler alone went in the autumn to Aix, staying 
till the eve of Napoleon's return. 

There were three poets, Rogers, Moore, and Campbell, 
the last stopping at Rouen to see his brother Daniel, 
from whom he had parted at Hamburg in 1800. 
Mrs. Siddons took over her daughter Cecily, who did 
not continue her mother's fame, but married a Scottish 
lawyer, George Combe. Kemble escorted her, with 
Mrs. Twiss, whose brother-in-law Richard had seen 
Paris in 1792. There was Mrs. Damer, the artist, of 
whom we have already heard and shall hear again. 
There was the more eminent sculptor Chantrey, who 
made the acquaintance of Canova. There was Curran, 
who had just resigned his judgeship, and Serjeant 
Best, not yet a judge. The Duke of Sussex had given 
Curran an introduction to the future Charles x. 
Everything he heard intensified his hatred of Napoleon.^ 

^ Artaiid, Vie de Hauterive. ^ Life of Curran, 



% 



TWO RESTOKATIONS 275 

There were military men like General Ramsay, Bruce, 
destined to assist in the escape of Lavalette, and 
Lord Cathcart, who had taken part in the expedition 
to Copenhagen and was subsequently Ambassador to 
St. Petersburg. Madame Junot, in whose house Cath- 
cart was quartered, and who speaks highly of his 
courtesy, had also to receive Lord and Lady Cole, 
who sent for Eliza Bathurst, She was the handsome 
daughter of the diplomatist who so mysteriously dis- 
appeared. Another military visitor was Colonel 
William Carmichael Smyth, who had accompanied 
his father in 1802 ; but Count Nugent, though born 
in Ireland, was an Austrian officer. The Navy was 
represented by Sir Sidney Smith, who was bound 
for the Congress of Vienna to plead for the reinstate- 
ment of Gustavus IV. on the throne of Sweden. He 
also advocated an international expedition against 
the piratical Dey of Algiers, of which he would him- 
self have taken the command. Nothing came of 
either scheme, but he got up a subscription dinner, 
attended by royal and other celebrities, the proceeds 
of which were devoted to the redemption of prisoners 
in Algiers. Science was represented by a Scottish 
professor, John (afterwards Sir John) Leslie, an 
Edinburgh Reviewer and eminent mathematician, 
who formed the habit of paying yearly visits 
to the Continent. There were philanthropists like 
Clarkson, who, as on his visit in 1789, was eager to 
obtain the consent of the new I'rench Government 
to the abolition of the slave-trade, while Wilber- 
force and Zachary Macaulay, the historian's father. 



276 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

were interesting themselves at home in the same 
cause, the latter sending over, or taking advantage 
of the presence of, his brother General Macaulay. 
Clarkson found sympathy from Lafayette, Bishop 
Gregoire, and Madame de Stael. The antiquary and 
connoisseur, James Millingen, passed through Paris 
on his way to or from Florence, as also William 
Stewart Rose, translator of Ariosto, friend of Ugo 
Foscolo, Walter Scott, and the Countess of Albany. 
He was destined to find a wife at Venice. There were 
painters like Stothard, Wilkie, and Haydon, to the 
last of whom we are indebted for the liveliest account 
of Paris, though this, like the rest of his journal, was 
not published tiU after his tragical death. He repre- 
sents Wilkie as constantly exclaiming, 'What a fool 
Napoleon was to lose such a country ! dear, dear ! ' 
Both Wilkie and Haydon sang 'God save the King' 
in the streets of Rouen, to the amazement or amuse- 
ment of the townsmen, one of whom said they were 
English milords. In Paris Wilkie tried to sell his 
prints, and had frequent disputes at restaurants 
about change. Another note-taker was Thomas Raikes, 
brother of the founder of Sunday-schools, but unfor- 
tunately his diary does not begin till 1832. A third 
diarist was Henry Crabb Robinson, to whom street 
urchins at Dieppe shouted 'Be off!' and who in a 
Rouen theatre heard a line against England applauded. 
He spent five weeks in Paris without a moment's ennui, 
yet left it without a moment's regret, travelling to 
Boulogne in company with Copleston, ' a very sensible, 
well-informed clergyman,' just elected Provost of Oriel 



TWO RESTORATIONS 277 

at Oxford, and destined to be Bishop of Llandaff. 
Stephen Weston and William Shepherd went doubtless 
with the intention of again reporting their adventures. 
William D. Fellowes found material for one of his 
books, and on another visit in 1817 he visited the 
old monastery of La Trappe. There were agriculturists 
like Morris Birkbeck of Wanborough. There were 
doctors like Hume, chief physician to the army, and 
Williams the oculist. 

Among the aristocratic visitors were Viscount Pon- 
sonby, afterwards Ambassador to Constantinople and 
Vienna, and the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, parents 
of the present Duke of Rutland, the Duke publishing 
his fortnight's journal and receiving many attentions 
from Count Dillon. There were also the Earl of 
Charlemont, the Earl of Bradford, Lord Forbes, Lord 
Lucan, the Earl of Oxford, Lord Kinnaird, Lady 
Aldborough (who remained till after Waterloo), 
the Marquis and Marchioness of Lansdowne, the 
Marquis of Downshire, Lord Ilchester, Lord Hill, the 
Marquis and Marchioness of Bath, the Earl and 
Countess of Hardwicke, Lord and Lady Coventry, 
the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, Lord Binning 
(afterwards Earl of Haddington), Lord Compton, the 
Marquis of Exeter, Lord and Lady Ranelagh, the 
Duke of Portland, Lord Gosford, Lord Trimleston, 
the Earl and Countess Darnley, the Duke of Devon- 
shire, his step-mother, Lord and Lady Morpeth, Lord 
Geo. Leveson-Gower, Sir John Sebright, M.P. for Hert- 
fordshire, Lord Sunderland, grandson of the Duke of 
Marlborough, Sir John and Lady Stepney, Lady Augusta 



278 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Cotton, Lord and Lady Holland, the Earl of Clare, 
Lord Carington, Lord Brownlow, Lady Bentinck, the 
notorious Lady Hamilton, the aged Duchess of Melfort 
with her son, the Marquis of Aylesbury, Lord Miltown, 
who, paralysed in his legs from childhood, went about 
in a chair, William Henry (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton, 
Lord Burghersh (as Earl of Westmorland he became a 
diplomatist). Lord Apsley, son and heir of Earl Bathurst, 
the Earl of Essex,^ Sir John and Lady KnatchbuU, 
Sir W. Clayton, Bagot (afterwards Sir Charles), and 
the Marquis of Clanricarde, who married Canning's 
daughter, was famous for gymnastic feats, and was 
afterwards Ambassador to Russia, Postmaster-General, 
and Lord Privy Seal. Edward John Littleton, M.P. 
for Staffordshire, a classical scholar, was accompanied 
by his handsome wife. Hyacinth Mary, natural daughter 
of the Marquis Wellesley, but recognised by the 
Wellesley family. Lady Priscilla Wellesley, daughter 
of the Earl of Mornington, another but legitimate 
niece of Wellington, just of age and destined to be 
Lady Burghersh and Countess of Westmorland, 
was in time to see d'Artois enter Paris. She survived 
till 1879.^ Lord Fitzroy Somerset, son of the Duke 
of Beaufort, in 1852 became Lord Raglan and was 
destined to die before Sebastapol. He married in 
August 1814 Wellington's other favourite niece. Lady 
Emily Wellesley. The Earl of Harrowby was accom- 
panied by Wellesley Pole and Gerald Wellesley, son 

^ An octogenarian, who in 1838, three months a widower, married 
Catherine Stevens, the vocalist, whose age was forty-four. 
2 Letters of Lady Burghersh. 



TWO RESTORATIONS 279 

of Sir Henry and afterwards Prebendary of Durham. 
Lord Aberdeen, Ambassador at Vienna, who bad 
accompanied the Austrian army in its march into 
France, was one of the Enghsh diplomatists who 
signed the Treaty of Paris of May 1814. John William 
Ward, afterwards Viscount and Earl of Dudley, a 
contributor to the Quarterly and M.P. for Ilchester, 
was also in Paris on his way to Italy. He rated 
Napoleon above Alexander and Csesar. Ward's travel- 
ling companion from Calais was General Montagu 
Mathew, M.P. for Tipperary, brother of the Earl of 
Landaff and a strenuous advocate of Catholic Eman- 
cipation. Thompson, M.P. for Midhurst — it is not clear 
whether he was the ex-M.P. for Evesham, a captive 
in 1803 — was second on the 9th February 1815 in a 
bloodless duel between Colonels Quentin and Palmer, 
the latter firing in the air after his antagonist had 
fired and missed. 

We should not omit among the visitors Anne 
Perry, the wife of James Perry of the Morning 
Chronicle. Perry himself had spent a year in Paris 
in 1792, sending of course letters to his paper, and 
he may be regarded as the earliest of Paris corre- 
spondents. He had, moreover, for the previous twelve 
months obtained the services of a French barrister 
named Sanchamau, the translator of several English 
works. Sanchamau at first found a seat on suffer- 
ance in the Assembly, in the gallery allotted to the 
suppleants, that is to say, the men destined to fill up 
vacancies from death or other causes ; but he applied 
on the 22nd January 1792 for a permanent seat in 



280 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

the new journalists' gallery.^ To return to Perry's 
wife, she was captured by Algerian pirates on her 
way home from Lisbon, and although soon released, 
captivity and seventeen weeks of a boisterous sea 
aggravated her already precarious health. She expired 
at Bordeaux in February 1815, at the age of thirty- 
eight. We do not hear whether her husband attended 
her deathbed. 

Even London shopkeepers went over for a week. 
John Scott, editor of the Champion, encountered one 
full of anti-French prejudices, ignorant of the language, 
unprovided even with a passport, and equipped only 
with Bank of England notes.^ 

To accommodate the visitors, an Anglican service 
was held in a chapel of the Protestant Oratoire, pro- 
bably the upper room which was hired from about 
1860 to 1885 by the Church of Scotland, and Galig- 
nani's Messenger was started, an edition of which, after 
Waterloo and during the stay of the British garrison, 
was published at Cambrai, 

' The English at that time,' says Madame de Chastenay, 
' almost did us the honours of Paris ' ; that is to say, 
they seemed hosts rather than guests, and after the 
first ball both sexes discarded their eccentric costumes. 
Yet they did not find themselves altogether welcome. 
The middle classes feared an English monopoly of 
trade, returned prisoners told stories of ill-treatment 
in England, and the populace resented the arrogance 
of conquerors. Miss Anne Carter must have been 

^ National Archives, Paris, A. A. 40. 

^ A Visit to Paris in 1814. Scott went again after Waterloo. 



TWO RESTORATIONS 281 

strangely mistaken in writing to her sister, ' It is im- 
possible to describe the enthusiasm with which we are 
everywhere received as English.' ^ Thomas Campbell, 
on the other hand, had been hooted at Dieppe, which 
he found incensed against the English, yet he does 
not speak of any incivility in Paris, where he danced 
attendance for nearly two months on Mrs. Siddons.^ 

A confidential police bulletin of the I7th October 
1814 says : — 

' The attention of the police has been called to the multi- 
tude of English who inundate Paris, and whose obscure 
station occasions uneasiness as to their destination and in- 
tentions. It is remembered on this point that after the 
Treaty of Amiens the French Government made an oflScial 
complaint that the London police had vomited (sic) six or 
seven hundred persons, the scum of England, who secretly 
influenced trade, public opinion, and police. We see col- 
lected here a number of disreputable people who appear 
to be without means of subsistence, and whose arrival from 
England seems an enigma.' 

Again on the 4th November : — 

' It is positively stated that on Saturday last Lord Welling- 
ton complained to the King of the mortification and ill-treat- 
ment which various Englishmen have experienced and are daily 
experiencing in Paris, as well as of the lack of supervision 
shown by the French authorities in putting an end to these 
dangerous aggressions. It is a fact that at the Caf6 Tortoni, 
the Opera, the restaurants, and in other public places. English- 
men are constantly affronted. These disorders are attributed 

^ Letters from a Lady to her Sister. 
^ Beattie, Life of Campbell. 



282 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

to a troop of half-pay oflScers or to some turbulent men 
discharged from the Guard of Honour, It seems certain, 
moreover, that Lord Wellington has expressly enjoined the 
English who are in Paris to behave very circumspectly, and 
not to notice provocations which might disturb the harmony 
necessary between the two nations.' 

And on 19th December : — 

'Every day there are fresh occasions of remarking the 
hatred of the Parisians for the English. Yesterday at the 
Salon the most violent language was used respecting them, 
and that to their faces.' 

In flat contradiction, however, to the police bulletins, 
Wansey describes the Parisians as glad to see English 
visitors once more amongst them.^ The British milord 
was good-naturedly burlesqued, as Weston tells us, in a 
farce called La Route de Paris. A provincial innkeeper 
welcomes milord and miladi. His bad French and her 
veil excite amusement. The lord asks for beefsteak 
for dinner. The lady is enchanted with everything. 
The lord cries ' God dem, vive la paix,' while the lady 
remarks that French and English have always been 
near enough to shake hands. The landlord rejoices 
that the lily after twenty years' preservation in an 
English conservatory is as flourishing as ever. Birk- 
beck, moreover, testifies to the welcome given to 
Englishmen at Montpellier, which he attributed to 
the kindness shown to French prisoners in England. 
Yet Haydon relates that on the performance of Ducis' 
Hamlet at the Comedie Fran^aise, the whole pit rose 

1 F. 7, 3784. 



TWO RESTORATIONS 283 

and applauded a line against England, shouting ' Bravo, 
a bas les Anglais/ and pointing to the English present. 

If the French authorities looked askance on English 
visitors, it is but fair to say that some of the latter 
sympathised with Napoleon. Lord and Lady Holland 
were doubtless among them, for Lord Holland sub- 
sequently protested against the transportation to St. 
Helena, and Lady Holland, as already stated, for- 
warded books thither to the captive. They were not 
likely, when in Paris, to parade their anti-Bourbon 
sentiments, but Hervey Montmorency Morris was less 
scrupulous. He, on the 19th April 1814, presented 
his newly born infant at the mairie of the tenth 
arrondissement, and gave its name as Napoleon.^ 
A young Irishman named Charles Honore Lyster, 
describing himself as a student, a few months later 
landed at Toulon from Elba, and the authorities very 
naturally ordered him to be watched. Lord Oxford's 
papers, moreover, were seized, and Wellington acknow- 
ledged that this was justified by his conduct and con- 
versation, and by the Bonapartist correspondence of 
which he had taken charge. 

I have spoken of Wellington, but it should be stated 
that the Embassy was at first filled by Sir Charles 
Stuart, afterwards Lord Stuart de Rothesay. He pre- 
sented his credentials to Louis xviii. on the 22nd June, 
but was soon transferred to The Hague. Wellington 
arrived with his troops from Spain on the 7th May, 
but went back to Madrid to see the Spanish dynasty 
restored, returned to England to take his seat in the 
1 F. 7, 3785. 



284 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Lords as Duke, and was then appointed ambassador. 
He presented his credentials on the 24th August, but 
with much greater pomp than Stuart. Three royal 
carriages, each drawn by eight horses, escorted from 
the Embassy his three carriages, each drawn by six 
horses. He was accompanied by Major Fremantle and 
Major Percy. On reaching the foot of the throne he 
made a profound reverence, whereupon the King rose, 
then sat down again, putting on his hat and motion- 
ing to Wellington and the princes of the blood to 
cover also. The crowd murmured at these honours, 
though they were also accorded to all the other am- 
bassadors, while the ultra-royalists professed indigna- 
tion at the Duke's fixing a ball in honour of Queen 
Charlotte's birthday for the 18th January 1814, as 
being a date too close to the 21st, the anniversary of 
Louis xvi.'s execution. They were also suspicious of 
his intimacy with the Duke of Orleans. He paid a 
visit to the Abbe Sicard's deaf and dumb boys, who 
were not, however, dumb, for they articulated 'Vive 
notre bon roi Louis xviii. ! ' The Duchess of Welling- 
ton was presented by the King with a Sevres dinner- 
service. The British Government was very uneasy lest 
Wellington should be ' kidnapped ' — an euphemism for 
being murdered — in some military rising. Anxious, 
therefore, for him to leave, its first idea was to send him 
to America to command in the short war with the 
United States. He himself, however, wished to remain 
in Paris, thinking that his departure would weaken 
Louis XVIII. A mission to the Vienna Congress he 
considered a poor pretext, but the Government per- 



TWO RESTOKATIONS 285 

sisted, though allowing him to choose his own time for 
departure. General Macaulay meanwhile went back to 
London with alarming reports. Welhngton, writing to 
Lord Liverpool on the 23rd October, said : — 

' It appears to me that Macaulay considers the danger of 
a revolt more certain and more likely to occur than I do, 
that is to say, he believes it certainly will occur within a 
very short period of time. I think it may occur any night, 
but I know of no fact to induce me to believe it is near, 
excepting the general one of great discontent and almost 
desperation among a very daring class of men.' 

Macaulay feared that the royal family would be 
massacred and Wellington 'detained,' Wellington 
stayed, however, till the 22nd January. Meanwhile 
he was besieged with all sorts of applications. Hervey 
Montmorency Morris asked permission to return to 
Ireland, promising to be a loyal subject. Wellington 
demurred, suggesting that in spite of his good inten- 
tions he would fall back into the company of his old 
associates through the disinchnation of loyalists to 
associate with him. Morris accordingly remained in 
the French army, was naturalised in November 1816; 
and remained in France till his death in 1839. 

A man designating himself representative of De 
Beaune, who in 1790 negotiated a loan for the three 
English royal dukes, also called on Wellington. He 
stated that the bondholders were pressing him for 
payment of the principal and of the twenty years' 
arrears of interest. Wellington forwarded his docu- 
ments to London, but nothing more is heard of the 
affair. Impey was there again on the same errand as 



286 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

in 1802, and Long, ex-president of the Irish College, 
went over to seek restitution; but these claims all 
stood over till after the Hundred Days. The Scottish 
College, however, was restored to its owners, and on the 
13th December Robertson, bishop-coadjutor of Dublin 
and inventor of a process of embossing books for the 
blind, solemnised a Te Deiim there in the presence 
of numerous British ecclesiastics. Quintin Craufurd 
likewise sent in a statement of British claims to com- 
pensation, and he obtained the restitution of eighty 
pictures, engravings, and sculptures confiscated in 1792. 

Wellington received directions to prevent Princess 
Caroline from repairing from Strasburg to Paris, 
though his own opinion was that she might safely 
have been permitted to amuse herself. Louis xviii., 
out of consideration for the Prince Regent, had 
resolved not to receive her. She nevertheless in 
October paid an incognito visit. 

But few of the English visitors could have been 
in time to see the Tsar, with his sons Constantine 
and Nicholas, the Emperor of Austria, and the King 
of Prussia, with his two sons, one of them the future 
William i., destined to re-enter Paris as a conqueror 
in 1871, for their stay was very short. The Russian 
and Prussian sovereigns went on to England in June, 
while the Austrian Emperor pleaded Italian affairs 
as preventing him from also going. The brilliant 
uniforms of their officers, however, continued to 
enliven the streets of the capital. Louis had pressed 
the Prince Regent to come over, telling him that 
the three monarchs seconded the invitation, but the 



TWO RESTORATIONS 287 

Prince, ' fat, fair, and forty,' or rather, as Leigh Hunt 
had been imprisoned for describing him, 'an Adonis 
of fifty,' probably shrank from the fatigue of the 
journey, or possibly he was not too confident of the 
stability of the restored dynasty. He made the 
excuse that a Regency Act would be necessary if 
he left his realm, yet his ancestors had paid visits 
to Hanover. His subjects were of course eager to 
be presented at Court. Shepherd speaks of Louis 
as 'uncomfortably corpulent and seemed very infirm 
in his feet, but his countenance is extremely pleasing, 
and if any reliance is to be placed on physiognomy, 
he is a man of a very benevolent disposition.' ^ Shep- 
herd went in clerical costume, fancying that this would 
be sufficient, but Stuart telling him the contrary, he 
had to hurry off to a tailor to get properly equipped. 

Dr. Williams presented the King with portraits 
of George iii. and the Prince Regent, ' two princes to 
whom,' Louis said, ' he had vowed the most faithful 
remembrance.' Sir Herbert Croft presented to him 
verses addressed to the Duchess of Angouleme. 
Galignani, who, though an Italian ex-priest, may be 
considered an Englishman by marriage and adoption, 
presented thirty volumes of his English reprints, 
his Paris Guide, and his Modern Spectator. Street, 
editor and part proprietor of the Courier, also had 
an audience, and was complimented on his journal's 
ten years' advocacy of the cause of the Bourbons.^ 

1 Paris in 1802 and 1814. 

- Retiring in 1822, he lived till 1846. His co-proprietor, Daniel 
Stuart, died in 1847. 



288 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Those visitors who were not presented at Court had 
an opportunity of seeing the King on his way to chapel. 
Haydon, who describes him as ' keen, fat, and eagle- 
eyed,' joined in shouting 'Vive le roi!' He remarked 
that Napoleon's initials still dotted the vestibule of 
the chapel. The Duke of Rutland also remarked 
that the draperies of the Tuileries were dotted with 
bees, and that ' N ' or an eagle was visible on all the 
furniture. This was a perpetual reminder to the 
Bourbons of the dethroned ruler. But few of these 
emblems appear to have been at first effaced in Paris, 
lest this should provoke counter-demonstrations, though 
provincial authorities displayed more zeal and less 
tact. Yet Stephen Weston speaks of thousands of 
workmen being employed in removing them, and Birk- 
beck observed men busily effacing Napoleon's name 
and eagles from public buildings, which he thought 
very pitiful, while Scott noticed ingenious attempts 
to turn ' N ' into ' L ' or ' H ' in honour of Louis xviii. 
or Henri iv. He also speaks of a sign ' Cafe de 
I'Empereur ' being converted into 'Cafe des Empereurs' 
in honour of the Russian and Austrian monarchs. 

On the 21st January, the anniversary of Louis xvi.'s 
execution, there was an imposing procession on the 
transfer of his and his Queen's remains to St. Denis, 
and requiem masses were celebrated all over France, 
the Protestant pastors Monod and Marron also holding 
services, albeit the latter had flattered Napoleon. 
These masses were ordered to be annual, but were 
never repeated. There were other spectacles. There 
was the proclamation of peace by a herald on the 



TWO RESTORATIONS 289 

1st June with all the revived formalities of the old 
Monarchy. The spoils of Italian art, including the 
Venetian horses, still embellished Paris, though 
destined to removal as a punishment for the Hundred 
Days. Sunday and festival observance was enforced 
on shops and factories, by a decree of the Prefect 
of Police on the 7th June. The host, for the first 
time since the Revolution, was carried through the 
streets on Corpus Christi day, all houses on the route 
having to be draped, and bystanders being expected, 
if not required, to uncover as it passed. The streets, 
says Haydon, were hung with tapestries, and altars 
were erected at various points. It was the first 
Sunday since the Revolution that shops had been 
shut, yet the gaming-tables were open as usual. 
Parisians did not fail to remark that these measures 
were decreed by a notorious sceptic, Beugnot. When 
Corpus Christi day came round again on the 25th May 
1815, Napoleon was once more on the throne. On 
the 29th August the King paid a State visit to the 
Hotel de Ville, in honour of which Paris illuminated. 
The fountains in the Champs Elysees poured forth 
wine for all comers, and comestibles were also 
gratuitous.^ 

The London newspapers expressed distrust in the 
stability of the new government, and doubtless on 
that account were prohibited admission to France, 
English officials seem to have shared this sentiment, 
for in July 1814 Admiral Mackenzie, who had brought 
over the Due de Berri, suddenly renounced his 
1 F. 7, 3783. 
T 



290 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

intended wintering in the south and recrossed the 
Channel. Crabb Robinson remarked that when the 
King reviewed the National Guard the cheers were 
very faint, and that there were some cries of ' Vive 
I'Empereur!' Even the Rev. R. W. Wake, curate 
of Maidstone, who, having only a week's holiday, 
went no further than Calais and Boulogne, was 
struck by the regret with which Napoleon's fall 
was spoken of^ Yet some of the visitors descried 
no troubles ahead. Wansey, who was in Paris in 
June, going thither by Dieppe and returning by 
Boulogne, says : — 

' That there are many dissatisfied with the new order 
of things, particularly among the military, there is no doubt, 
and we may expect to hear of partial insurrections and 
commotions among the men returned from the wars. . . . 
But a Government that employs men of such talents as 
those I have mentioned (Talleyrand, Fouch6, Louis, and 
Montesquiou) will not be easily overturned, particularly as 
the leaders of the army are with the Court ; and as to 
the return of Napoleon, he ran the full length of his tether. 
You will hear no more of his rule in France.' ^ 

John Scott, however, in the diligence between 
Dieppe and Paris, heard an officer with Napoleon's 
portrait on his snuff-box say, in reply to English 
expressions of satisfaction at the peace, ' All very 
well, this tranquillity of Europe is a fine thing, but 
will it not keep me always a captain?' Another officer, 
though originally forced away from the study of 

^ Mon Journal de Huit Jours. 
3 Visit to Paris in June 1814, 



TWO RESTORATIONS 291 

medicine into tlie army, spoke with enthusiasm of 
Napoleon, and the mass of the people, while admitting 
Napoleon's faults, were in Scott's judgment in his 
favour. ' Ah but he was a great man ! ' was the 
common phrase. 

Richard Boyle Bernard, M.P., son of the Earl of 
Bandon, remarked that Louis xviii., passing on his 
way to mass, was repeatedly greeted with cries of 
' Vive le roi ! ' and he believed the most respectable 
portion of the nation to be loyal; but the number 
of discontented spirits would, he thought, necessitate 
prolonged vigilance. At Calais theatre, moreover, 
on his way back in the autumn, Bernard heard a 
passage expressing satisfaction with the peace hissed 
by the officers present.^ He was struck, too, by the 
dislike felt in France for the English, which was in 
striking contrast to their cordial welcome in Germany. 

Ward, who saw Louis xviii. enter Paris, remarked 
that the applause was neither long nor vehement, 
and that the Bourbons were received with cold 
acquiescence.^ 

Eustace, the Catholic priest, likewise gives no hint 
of another overturn, yet his visits of 1790 and 1802 
should have taught him the instability of French 
politics. Moreover, a sentry told him that the 
Emperor had in ten years done more to embellish 
Paris than the Bourbons in a century, and that had 
he reigned ten years longer he would have made 
it the finest city in the world. Jones, chaplain on 

^ Tour through Some Parts of France. 
2 Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff. 



292 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

board the Blenheim at anchor off Marseilles, was 
more excusable in regarding the fall of Napoleon 
as definitive, yet the very parallel which he drew 
in his 29th May sermon between the English and the 
French Restoration might have reminded him that 
1660 was reversed by 1688. Weston, however, was 
struck not by any feeling in favour of Napoleon, but 
by the sarcasms heaped on him ; and Shepherd, though 
he doubted the allegiance of the army, thought the 
mass of the people friendly to the Bourbons. The 
smallest spark amid so much inflammable matter 
might, he knew, produce an extensive conflagration. 
Some of the numerous pamphlets on Napoleon which, 
pending the institution of a censorship, were freely 
hawked in the streets, were the work of admirers, 
and the Grand Duke Constantine heard Louis xviii, 
gravely reply, when the rest of the royal family had 
been disparaging Napoleon, ' Napoleon has done 
wonders for the glory and welfare of France, and 
if I can render her happy it will be by following the 
documents which he has left. I should like to have 
as good a head as he whose chair I am occupying 
and whose table is serving me to write at, for I feel 
myself inferior to him.' ^ But even pessimists, while 
apprehending a revolution, had no fear of Napoleon's 
return. 

Return however he did, and those Englishmen who 
had visited him at Elba cannot have been among 
the most startled. As early as the 29th July, less 
than three months after Napoleon's arrival in his 

^ Memoirs of Moriolles, p. 157. 



TWO RESTORATIONS 293 

little realm, General Spallannchi reported from 
Florence that some Englishmen had gone out of 
curiosity to Elba but had returned in ill-humour, 
the fallen monarch having barely allowed them to 
see him and that only in his garden. It seems from 
the statement of Vice-Consul Innes that the party 
numbered seven, including one lady, and that after 
being kept a long time waiting for an answer the 
garden interview was assigned them for the next 
day. A Warwickshire man who had passed through 
Paris and whose letter, intercepted by the Leghorn 
police, was signed ' Richard,' evidently his Christian 
name, sailed from Leghorn with his sister on the 
24th November, but was told that Napoleon refused 
to receive curiosity-mongers. Not easily to be foiled, 
however, he made a second voyage and on alighting 
at an hotel at Porto Ferrajo on the 2nd December 
found covers laid for thirty Corsican functionaries 
in honour of the anniversary of Napoleon's coronation 
in 1804. Such a celebration did not argue renuncia- 
tion of empire. On the following day he was allowed 
an audience, but nothing having been said about 
his sister he had to leave her outside. Napoleon, 
whom he found standing in a small room, advanced 
with an affable air and asked, 'Where do you come 
from ? ■" 

' Warwickshire.' 

' I do not remember the name.' 

' It is in the very centre of England.' 

' What is your occupation ? ' 

' General commerce, but chiefly manufactures.' 



294 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

' Do you find much custom in Italy ? ' 

'Tolerable.' 

' None in France, eh ? ' 

' None at present, for want of a commercial treaty.' 

' A commercial treaty would suit you ? ' 

' Certainly, but I do not think we shall get it.' 

' I did your commerce much mischief.' 

'Not so much as was supposed. Our trade found 
outlets out of Europe which were very profitable.' 

'The troubles in Spain will open up their colonies 
to you ? ' 

' Yes, but at first they will be jealously closed,' 

' Your licence system was bad. It was semi-robbery.' 

'This kind of conversation' (says Richard), 'lasted about 
an hour, and then turned on France. ... He asked me 
whether I was in Paris during the Peace of Amiens. " Yes." 
" You found it now much altered ? " " Yes, much larger 
than in 1802." "It is a fine city," he added. ... I took 
the opportunity of reminding him of my sister, but he took 
no notice. He then conversed for a few minutes, making 
altogether half an hour. On getting up to leave he asked 
me to introduce my sister, whom he received with the 
greatest affability, keeping up a conversation with her till 
a carriage was heard coming, when he bowed and we 
retired. ... He frequently put his fingers into a small 
snuff-box, but did not seem to take much notice of its 
contents. He asked me whether I thought the Bourbons 
were really popular in France. He told me he had found 
the heat more trying in Russia in the month of August 
than in any other part of Europe, and he explained the 
reason. I remarked evident signs of interest and inquisitive- 
ness when speaking of the Bourbons. He twice asked me 



TWO RESTORATIONS 295 

whether they were popular in France and what was said 
of them, and was not satisfied with a vague reply/ ^ 

Frederick Douglas, M.P., son of Lord Glenbervie, on 
Ms way home from Athens had a courteous reception, 
which did not however prevent him from speaking 
and voting in 1815 for the renewal of the war. 

' Why have you come ? ' asked Napoleon. 

' To see a great man.' 

'Rather to see a wild beast,' rejoined Napoleon, who 
inquired whether Douglas had seen Murat or the Pope. 
The latter, said Napoleon, ' is an obstinately resigned 
old man. I did not treat him properly. I did not go 
the right way to work with him,' As to the state of 
France, Douglas reported that there was much en- 
thusiasm for the Bourbons, though there were a few 
malcontents. ' Yes,' remarked Napoleon, ' people who 
belong to whatever party pays them and make much 
stir in order to get money.' Napoleon went on to 
complain of the treachery of his officers, of the pam- 
phleteers who styled him a usurper, of his brothers for 
not having seconded him, and of the sovereigns who 
had abandoned him. Douglas reported that he could 
no longer mount a horse, and that he had fallen into 
profound apathy. Perhaps Napoleon intentionally 
gave him this erroneous impression, knowing that he 
was on his way to Paris, which he reached in January 
1815.2 

Lord William Bentinck, afterwards Viceroy of India, 
with a friend were sumptuously regaled, but we have 

1 Livi, Napoleon a Elba, 1888 ; Siecle, August 23, 1887. 
^ Quotidienne, February 6, 1815, 



296 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

no record of the conversation, and an English lady ' of 
angelical beauty,' whom Pons does not name, but who 
may have been Lady Jersey, for he says she showed 
the Emperor continued sympathy during the St. 
Helena captivity, was received with marked favour. 
When, on her return to London, she saw the Russian 
and Prussian sovereigns pass by, she said to the 
fashionable gathering round her, ' Those men cannot 
seem imposing to persons who like me have had a close 
view of the Emperor Napoleon.' Another visitor in 
September 1814 was John Barber Scott, of Bungay, 
Suffolk, ultimately a Fellow of Emmanuel College, 
Cambridge, but then a graduate twenty-two years of 
age, who was accompanied by Major (Patrick ?) 
Maxwell, R.A., Colonel (afterwards General) John 
Lemoine, R. A., Captain Smith, and Colonel Niel Douglas. 

They encountered Napoleon as he was out riding, 
and on their saluting him he stopped for a few minutes 
to question them. They thought he looked more like a 
crafty priest than a hero. On being told that Scott was a 
Cantab he said, ' What, Cambridge, Cambridge ? Oh yes, 
you are a young man ; you will be a lawyer. Eh, eh, you 
will be Lord Chancellor?' Being told by Douglas that 
he belonged to a Highland regiment, Napoleon asked 
whether they did not wear kilts (jupes). On Douglas 
replying in the aflfirmative. Napoleon asked whether 
he had brought his kilt with him, as he should like to 
see it, but Douglas was unable to gratify his curiosity.^ 

Equally short, or even shorter, had been the inter- 
view of Sir Gilbert Starling and a Mr. Campbell.^ 

1 Temple Bar, October 1903. ^ /jj-^j^ 



TWO RESTORATIONS 297 

One visitor said he was as pleased to have spent nine 
days at Elba as if he had won £30,000. Napoleon, 
however, refused audiences to Englishmen whom he 
suspected of simple curiosity or of exultation at his 
fall.^ When he went to Longone, the second town in 
the island, there were numerous English visitors, and it 
was remarked to him that they followed him wherever 
he went. He replied, 'I am an object of curiosity; let 
them satisfy themselves. They will go home and 
amuse the gentlemans (sic) by describing my acts and 
gestures.' He added in a sad tone, ' They have won 
the game ; they hold the dice.' 

Yet so far from showing him disrespect, Pons states 
that these sixty visitors of all classes vied in extolling 
him. Pons also acknowledges that Colonel Campbell, 
though deputed by his Government to watch Napoleon, 
veiled his supervision so carefully that only the closest 
observation could detect it.^ 

But the principal visitor, and the only one invited 
to dinner, was Lord Ebrington, afterwards Earl of 
Fortescue and in 1839-1841 Viceroy of Ireland. He first 
waited on the Emperor at 8 p.m. on the 6th December, 
and for three hours walked up and down the room 
with him. ' You come from France ; tell me frankly,' 
said Napoleon, 'whether the French are satisfied.' 
' Only so-so,' replied Ebrington. ' It cannot be other- 
wise,' rejoined Napoleon ; ' they have been too much 
humiliated by the peace. The appointment of the 
Duke of Wellington as Ambassador must have seemed 

^ Nuova Antologia, January 1887. 

"^ Pons de I'Herault, Souvenirs d'Elbe, edited by Pelissier, 1897- 



298 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

an insult to the army, as also the special attentions 
shown him by the King. If Lord Wellington had 
come to Paris as a visitor, I should have had pleasure 
in showing him the attentions due to his great ability, 
but I should not have liked his being sent to me as 
Ambassador.' 

The justice of this remark is obvious. Napoleon 
extolled the House of Lords as the bulwark of the 
English constitution. He denounced the dupHcity of 
the Emperor Alexander, expressed esteem for the 
Austriar Emperor, and spoke slightingly of the King 
of Prussia. 'How should I be treated,' he asked 
Ebrington, ' if I went to England ? Should I be 
stoned ? ' Ebrington replied that he would run no risk, 
and that the irritation formerly existing against him 
was daily dying out. 'I think, however,' rejoined 
Napoleon, 'that there would be some danger from 
your mob ' — he used the English word—' at London.' 

'The grace of his smile and the simplicity of his 
manner,' says Ebrington, ' had put me quite at my ease. 
He himself appeared to wish me to question him. He 
replied without the least hesitation, with a promptitude 
and clearness which I have never seen equalled in any 
other man.' 

Next day, just as Ebrington was preparing to sail, 
came an invitation to dinner, and this second interview 
lasted from seven till eleven. Napoleon inquired for 
the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Whitworth, Erskine, 
and Holland, and spoke especially of Fox. Informed 
that Fox felt much flattered at his reception in 1802, 
Napoleon said, 'He had reason to be so. He was 



TWO RESTORATIONS 299 

everywhere received like a divinity because he was 
known to be in favour of peace.' ' Tell Lord Grenville,' 
added Napoleon, ' to come and see me. I wager that 
you in England thought me a devil, but now that you 
have seen me and France also you must be somewhat 
disabused.' He justified the detentions of 1803. 
Ebrington, however, maintained that the embargo on 
French shipping in British ports prior to the formal 
declaration of war was in accordance with precedent, 
on vrhich Napoleon rephed, ' Yes, you considered it right 
because it was to your advantage ; other nations who 
lost by it thought it wrong. I am sure that at heart 
you in England approved me for showing force of 
character. Do you not see that I am a bit of a pirate 
like yourselves ? ' 

Napoleon half in earnest advocated polygamy, espe- 
cially in the colonies, where a planter might have a 
wife of each colour, so that the two families might grow 
up together harmoniously. He inquired for ' my good 
friend Ussher ' — Captain, afterwards Sir Thomas Ussher 
— who had conveyed him to Elba. 

On surprise being expressed by Ebrington at his calm 
endurance of adversity. Napoleon said, 'It is because 
everybody was more surprised at it than myself. I 
have not too good an opinion of mankind, and have 
always distrusted fortune. Moreover, I had little 
enjoyment. My brothers were much more kings than 
I was. They tasted the sweets of royalty, while I had 
only the worries and cares.' ^ 

^ Ebrington's Memorandum of Tioo Conversations, published in 1823 
as a pamphlet of thirty-one pages and never reprinted. 



300 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Lord John Russell, the future statesman, then 
twenty-three years of age, being taken by his father 
to Florence in the autumn of 1814, embraced the 
opportunity of visiting Elba. ' When I saw Napoleon,' 
he says, ' he was in evident anxiety respecting the state 
of France and his chances of again seizing the crown 
which he had worn for ten years. I was so struck with 
his restless inquiry that I expressed in a letter to my 
brother in England my conviction that he would make 
some fresh attempts to disturb France and govern 
Europe.' ^ 

But by far the most curious incident of Napoleon's 
reign at Elba was his presence at an entertainment in 
honour of George iii.'s birthday, given on the 4th 
June 1814 by Captain Tower on board the frigate 
Undaunted. Napoleon, on reaching Frejus after his 
abdication in April, had embarked in the Undaunted 
in preference to a French vessel assigned for his 
passage to Elba, and had taken a fancy to the captain, 
Ussher. The Undaunted went to and from Elba and 
Leghorn, and it might have celebrated the royal 
birthday at the latter port. Napoleon afterwards 
thought that Colonel (ultimately Sir Neil) Campbell 
purposely planned the celebration at Elba. When, 
however. Towers invited him to come on board, and 
sent round invitations to the principal inhabitants of 
Porto Ferrajo, he readily accepted the invitation, and 
directed his courtiers, if such a phrase can be used, to 
do likewise. One of these, Pons de I'Herault, to whom 
we are indebted for the fullest account of the festival 

^ Earl Russell, Recollections. See Appendix C. 



TWO RESTORATIONS 301 

— not published, however, till 1897^ — was inclined 
indeed to regard the invitation as an insult and the 
festival as a bravado; but his master told him that 
it was the duty of British sailors to observe their 
sovereign's birthday wherever they might happen to 
be. A ' throne/ says Pons, had been prepared for the 
Emperor on the bridge ; and he continues : — 

' The Emperor arrived, and the ship's officers received him 
at the top of the ladder. Guns could not be fired, as they 
were not mounted, but the crew, clustered on the rigging, 
gave him three hearty cheers, and the Emperor looking up 
at them raised his hat. He then passed to the quarter-deck. 
There all were ranged in a circle, and the Emperor, as 
though quite at home, his left hand as usual in his fob, put 
the trivial questions which he nearly always employed on 
such occasions, for he did not bother himself with finding 
remarks appropriate to each particular individual. It was 
not his moment for parade. When the circle had broken up 
the Emperor asked for an interpreter and went to talk to 
the sailors, especially to a mate with whom he had several 
times conversed during his passage from Fr^jus to the isle 
of Elba. The entire crew seemed eager to see him again. 
The countenances of these good fellows expressed the very 
contrary of the perversity of their Government. Captain 
Tower sincerely admired the Emperor, and watched all his 
movements with a gaze full of respect and interest. He had 
one of those open countenances which inspire confidence. 
The Emperor said to me . . . "The English Government 
will never forgive me for having been the most determined 
Frenchman in breaking down its supremacy. Not that 
hatred actuated me, it was duty, it was love of country.^ 

^ Souvenirs de Vile d/Mhe. 

2 We know how Napoleon as a youth detested France, regarding 



302 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

All well-bred Englishmen consequently honour me. If I 
went to England the English Government would be afraid 
of my popularity and would pack me off." . . . The same 
cheers accompanied the Emperor on his departure, and he 
responded with the same salute.'^ 

Pons, with his wife and children and the other 
guests, remained to the dinner and ball. Unfortun- 
ately, two of the ship's officers drank a little too much, 
and so misbehaved themselves as to oblige several of 
the ladies to withdraw. It is pathetic to think that 
Napoleon's next and last acquaintance with British tars 
was when, thirteen months later, he gave himself up to 
the Bellerophon, and was conveyed as a captive in the 
Northumberland to St. Helena. 

One Englishman at least was a spectator of Napoleon's 
departure from Elba. A Mr. Grattan (probably the 
father of Thomas CoUey Grattan, the traveller and 
novelist) had landed on the island on the 24th Feb- 
ruary. On the evening of the 26th he noticed unusual 
bustle, as though something was about to happen, and 
at 9 P.M. he saw Napoleon, escorted by General Bert- 
rand, come out in his sister Pauline's four-horse carriage, 
enter a boat, and go on board the brig Inconstant. 
Thereupon the whole flotilla got under way, the soldiers 
shouting ' Vive I'Empereur ! ' Scarcely believing his 
eyes, Grattan hired a boat to go alongside the brig, and 
thence he saw Napoleon in his grey overcoat and round 

Corsica alone as his country, but he doubtless got to consider himself 
a real Frenchman, 

1 According to an English account Napoleon, on the band striking 
up the National Anthem, hummed the tune. [Temple Bar, October 
1903.) 



TWO RESTORATIONS 303 

hat pacing the quarter-deck. One of the boatmen, 
however, cried out that there was an Englishman on 
board, upon which an officer on the poop of the In- 
constant demanded who he was and what he wanted. 
Grattan had to explain that he had merely come to 
have a look at the Emperor, whereupon he was told 
to be off, and he complied with alacrity, expecting 
every instant to be fired at or arrested.^ 

Up to the 20th March the Moniteur had continued 
publishing loyal addresses to Louis xviii., but on the 
21st it announced, ' The King and the Princes left last 
night. His Majesty the Emperor arrived this evening 
at eight o'clock in his palace of the Tuileries.' One of 
Napoleon's first inquiries to a lady of his court was 
whether there were many English in Paris. On being 
told that nearly all had left he exclaimed, ' Ah, they 
recollect what I did before, but those times are past. 
You do not repeat yourself.' John Cam Hobhouse, 
Byron's friend, afterwards Lord Broughton, tells us this, 
and he adds that the detentions of 1802 were against 
French feeling and could not have been repeated in 
1815 in defiance of such a feeling. Napoleon, more- 
over, may have thought there was a chance of his re- 
cognition by the allies,^ and the detention of foreigners 
would have been a virtual declaration of war. Yet 

^ Sir Neil Campbell, Napoleon at FontainebUau and Elba, 1869. 

2 As it was, the Marquis Wellesley (Wellington's brother), the 
Duke of Sussex (the Prince Regent's brother). Lords Lansdowne, 
Grey, Byron, Lauderdale, Guilford, Bessborough, and three other 
peers voted in his favour, as also Mackintosh, Romilly, Whitbread, 
Tierney, Lord Morpeth, Sir Timothy Shelley (the poet's grandfather). 
Lord Stanley (father of the 'Rupert of Debate'), Lord Duncannon, 
and twenty-nine other members of the Lower House, 



304 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

the stampede was obviously prudent, and the principal 
Englishman who remained did not escape molestation. 
Francis Henry Egerton, as we have seen, had come 
over to Paris in 1802, and he had apparently continued 
to reside uninterruptedly, for he published several 
works there, both in English and French, between 
1812 and 1826. He had hired a house till 1814, but 
on the restoration of the Bourbons he purchased the 
mansion of the Noailles family in the rue St. Honore, 
and to show his sympathy with the new Government 
he paid up at once, on the 2nd March 1815, in lieu 
of by instalments, the stamp duty of 30,000 francs. 
This seems to have marked him out for Napoleon's 
resentment. The house with its contents was requi- 
sitioned to serve for a Government office. Egerton 
resisted, stood a kind of siege, and appealed to the 
tribunals. He could not, it is obvious, have perma- 
nently withstood Napoleon, but he seems to have held 
his ground until Waterloo arrived and put an end to 
the affair. He lost no time in securing legal domicile 
and civic rights, for in default of the latter one alien 
could not bequeath property to another, such property 
being forfeit to the French Crown. His support of 
the Bourbons should have shielded him from further 
annoyance, but in 1818 he had an unpleasant episode. 
Workmen who were placing flower-pots on the pillars 
of the Tuileries gardens found it convenient to fasten 
ropes to the wall of his back garden in the rue de 
Rivoli. Egerton drove out in his carriage and required 
them to desist. An altercation ensued, there were cries 
of ' Down with the Englishman ! ' and he was dragged 



TWO RESTORATIONS 305 

out of his carriage to tlie guardhouse. Though promptly 
released, he was very punctilious in exacting an apology 
for this indignity, threatening otherwise to quit France. 
He was very eccentric in his latter years, if we are to 
beheve that cats and dogs dressed up as human beings 
sat at his dinner-table, and that he kept rabbits and 
partridges in his garden in order to have shooting on 
his own premises. He died as Duke of Bridgewater 
in 1829, aged seventy-nine, and left £8000 for eight 
prize treatises which were named after him. The H6tel 
St. James, into which his house has been converted, 
contains the original staircase and other relics of the 
mansion in which Marie Antoinette welcomed Lafayette 
and Noailles on their return from America. 

Englishmen who, like Egerton, remained or arrived 
during the Hundred Days witnessed curious scenes. 
Hobhouse in his passport of 1814 had seen the word 
empire erased and royaume substituted. He now 
found a contrary change made. He saw Napoleon 
review the National Guard on the 16th April, and attend 
the Comedie rran9aise on the 21st, on both which 
occasions his reception was enthusiastic. He also wit- 
nessed the ceremony on the Champ de Mars, when 
Napoleon closely scrutinised the crowd with his eye- 
glass during the mass on which he had resolved in 
order to show that the Empire was not anti-catholic. 
Hobhouse, though strenuously opposed to the renewal of 
the war by the allies, acknowledges that Napoleon was 
not popular in Paris except with the military, and that 
the cheers were very faint. Yet he courted popularity by 
visiting public institutions and by walking about almost 

u 



306 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

unattended and conversing with people of all classes. 
He removed on the I7th April from the Tuileries, 
where, however, he still held his councils, to the Elysee, 
close to the Borghese palace which Wellington had pur- 
chased for the British Embassy. The latter was of course 
vacant, for all the ambassadors had followed Louis xviii. 
to Ghent, Fitzroy Somerset assuring him previously 
to his flight that England would stand by him. In the 
absence of ambassadors foreigners could not of course be 
formally presented, but Mrs. Damer obtained an inter- 
view to give Napoleon the bust of Fox, which she had 
promised him in 1802. The jewelled snuff-box bearing 
his own portrait which he gave her in return is now 
in the British Museum. Up to the 4th May, if not 
later, the Calais and Dover mail-packets continued to 
run, and took many French passengers. When Corpus 
Christi festival arrived the processions, as from the 
Revolution till 1813 and as ever since, were confined 
in Paris to the churches or their enclosures. 

Napoleon affected liberal views, not only by summon- 
ing Benjamin Constant to his councils, but by inviting 
to return to Paris his friend Madame de Stael, who had 
not joined in the exultation at his fall, and indeed 
had sent him warning to Elba, through his brother 
Joseph, of a plot against his life. She did not accept 
the invitation, but wrote to Quintin Craufurd a letter 
intended for transmission to the English Government, 
in which she afl&rmed the sincerity of his liberal pro- 
fessions. Yet she might justly have distrusted these. 

Among the Frenchmen who fled to England was 
one whose Irish extraction entitles him to mention. 



TWO RESTORATIONS 307 

Jean Baptiste Lynch, whose Jacobite ancestors had 
settled at Bordeaux, was imprisoned during the Re- 
volution. In 1808 Napoleon made him Mayor of 
Bordeaux, and in 1810 created him a Count. Lynch 
was lavish in his professions of fidelity to the Empire, 
but in 1813 he had secret dealings with a royalist 
emissary, and in 1814, on the approach of Wellington's 
army, he proclaimed Louis xviii. at Bordeaux. He 
was the first man in France to do this, and he also 
sent a deputation to Louis in England. On hearing 
of Napoleon's return from Elba and unopposed march 
on Paris, he despatched the Duchess of Angouleme 
to England to be out of his reach, and he himself 
followed her. He was at Newcastle on a visit to a 
relative when news of Waterloo arrived, and he was 
cheered by the populace.^ Louis, who in 1814 had 
awarded him the grand cross of the Legion of Honour, 
thus giving him a Napoleonic decoration for deserting 
Napoleon, made him a peer. In a letter written to 
a Bordeaux editor in 1816 Lynch urged the justice of 
Catholic emancipation, but deprecated Irish independ- 
ence, and expressed a wish to go and deliver loyalist 
speeches in Ireland, that he might render service to 
his ancestral as he had done to his native country. 

No foreigners applied during the Hundred Days for 
domicile or naturalisation, whereas previously Philip 
Dormer Stanhope had obtained domicile,^ as also James 

^ Mackenzie, History of Newcastle, 1827. 

2 Philip Dormer Stanhope had settled in France or Belgium about 
1790, and during the war procured remittances from England through 
the Paris bankers Perregaux and LafStte. Was he a son of Lord 



308 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

George Hartley, a law student, and naturalisation had 
been accorded to two Irish officers in the French service 
— Julius Terence O'Reilly and William Corbett. 

On the 12th June Napoleon left for the frontier, 
and a period of suspense followed. Hobhouse started 
on the following day for Geneva, but found he could 
not pass through the armies, and accordingly returned 
to Paris on the 28th. ' I cannot help wishing,' he says 
in his letters to Byron, which the Quarterly character- 
ised as 'infamous libels on the English name and 
character,' 'that the French may meet with as much 
success as will not compromise the military character 
of my own countrymen; but as an Englishman I 
cannot be witness of their triumph; as a lover of 
liberty I would not be a spectator of their reverses.' 
This was an utterance published after the event. Per- 
haps Hobhouse at the time, like Byron, was neverthe- 
less sorry to hear of Waterloo. He seems to have 
quitted Paris before the re-entry of Louis xviii,, but 
British residents like Helen Williams, Croft, Craufurd, 
and Egerton, witnessing the first fall of Napoleon, the 
accession of Louis, his flight, the arrival of Napoleon, 
his return from Waterloo, and the re-accession of Louis, 
beheld in the short space of fourteen months a series of 
vicissitudes unexampled in human annals. 

No Englishman who saw Napoleon in Paris after 
Waterloo, if any such there were, has left any record 

Chesterfield's illegitimate son ? If so, the latter was a father at the 
age of nineteen, for he was born in 1732, and this Philip Dormer 
Stanhope gave his age in September 1814 on applying for domicile in 
France as sixty-three. Possibly, however, this last figure is a misprint 
in the Bulletin des Lois. 



TWO KESTORATIONS 309 

of it. It is obvious, indeed, that the few Englishmen 
then in Paris would shun observation during those 
days of suspense. An Englishwoman, daughter of 
one of the officers detained in 1803 and herself 
born in captivity, may, however, have then seen him. 
In any case her husband, Legouve, the Academician 
who died in March 1903, at the age of ninety-four, was 
in all probability the last survivor of those who had 
seen Napoleon in Paris, for he was six years of age 
in 1815. The last survivor who had mixed in his 
society at St. Helena was Madame Hortense Eugenie 
Thayer, daughter of General Bertrand by Henrietta, 
daughter of General Arthur Dillon. This was one 
of Napoleon's compulsory marriages, but Bertrand 
succeeded in gaining his unwilling bride's affection. 
Hortense, born at Paris in 1810, was presented by 
Napoleon at St. Helena with a pair of earrings, and 
he witnessed the boring of her ears for this purpose, 
complimenting her on her composure during the 
operation. She married Am6dee Thayer, a French 
Senator under the Second Empire, of American extrac- 
tion. Dying in 1890, she bequeathed to Prince Victor 
Bonaparte a red damask coat presented to her by 
Napoleon for a spencer to be made out of it, but 
preserved intact, together with other relics. We do 
not hear what became of the earrings. Her mother 
gave Napoleon lessons in English at St. Helena, and 
I subjoin a short article on this subject published by 
me in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1895 : — 

A recent exhibition of Napoleonic relics in Paris com- 



310 NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITOKS 

prised, among numerous specimens of handwriting — one 
of them the draft abdication of Fontainebleau, another 
the draft ' Themistocles ' letter to the Prince Eegent — a 
lesson in translating French into English. Pitying Napoleon 
as we must, though conscious that captivity alone secured 
France and Europe against another Hundred Days, his 
attempt to learn English is irresistibly pathetic. We are 
reminded of Ovid learning to speak, and even to versify, 
in Dacian, but Napoleon does not seem to have mastered 
English sufl&ciently to be able to write in prose without 
numerous mistakes. He had been acquainted from his 
youth, by translations, with several English authors. He 
was fond of Ossian, and a collection of thirty-four books, given 
him by his sister Pauline to take with him to Egypt, 
included Bacon's Essays, in which he marked in pencil 
two passages : one in the chapter Of Great Place, from the 
third sentence, ' It is a strange desire to seek power and to 
lose liberty,' to the sentence preceding the lines from Seneca; 
the other in the chapter Of Kingdoms and Estates, from 
* triumph amongst the Romans ' to the end. Patronised by 
the younger Robespierre and by Barras, he had already 
exemplified the saying, 'By indignities men come to 
dignities'; and he was destined also, like Bacon himself, 
to find that 'the standing is slipping, and the regression 
is either a downfall or at least an eclipse.' He never, 
apparently, saw acted even an adaptation of Shakespeare, yet 
on the eve of the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens he 
surprised his Council of State by diverging from a coinage 
question into a tirade against both Shakespeare and Milton. 
Too busy, even if inclined, to study English, he would, had 
he invaded England in 1803 and commissioned Sir Francis 
Burdett to organise a republic, have taken with him one 
hundred and seventeen interpreter guides, in red coats 
and white trousers — a corps which he expected to recruit 
from Irish and other refugees. One of these refugees, the 



TWO RESTORATIONS 311 

notorious Lewis Goldsmith, read the London newspapers for 
him. But Napoleon was not fated to get nearer to English 
soil than William iii.'s landing-place, Torbay. 

Captivity afforded him the requisite leisure and also a 
strong inducement, for he was anxious, not to acquaint him- 
self with English literature, but to see what was said of 
himself in the English press. Accordingly, on the six weeks' 
voyage to St. Helena, he took two lessons from Las Cases, 
who, when himself an exile, had taught French and learned 
English in London. It seems likely that he had acquired 
just a smattering before Waterloo, if not before Elba ; for 
while waiting at Balcombe House till Longwood was ready 
for him, he occasionally spoke English (desiring her to 
correct his mistakes) to the lively Betsy Balcombe, that 
enfant terrible who coolly questioned him not only as to his 
supposed atheism, but as to the ' happy dispatch ' of the 
wounded French at Jaffa and as to the execution of the 
Due d'Enghien. He sent, moreover, for some English books, 
one of them an edition of -^sop, and, pointing to the picture 
of the ass kicking the sick lion, he remarked in English, 
' It is me {sic) and your governor ' (Sir Hudson Lowe). His 
accent then, and probably to the last, was very peculiar, and 
he usually talked and joked with Betsy in French, though 
her French was not of the best. He got her to translate to 
him Dr. Warden's account of the voyage of the Northumber- 
land. Though addicted to teasing, he had so won her affec- 
tion that she shed many tears on quitting the island, where, 
according to a recent French visitor, the recollections of 
Napoleon have been effaced by a wild-beast show, a visitor 
quite as rare as an imperial captive. When settled at Long- 
wood, Napoleon resolved on seriously renewing the study. 
Las Cases gave him a daily lesson ; sometimes finding him 
a diligent scholar, at other times so inattentive that Napoleon 
would himself laughingly ask his teacher whether he did 
not deserve the rod, regarded by him as an essential adjunct 



312 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

to education. He even wrote several letters in English to 
Las Cases, but the irregular verbs overtaxed his patience. 
He managed, however, to read after a fashion, and, according 
to Las Cases, might at a push have made himself understood 
in writing ; but it does not appear that the lessons went on 
more than a few weeks. They had probably ceased long 
before December 1816, when Las Cases had to quit the 
island. A scrap of paper, presented by him to a friend, and 
also included in the exhibition, is the only trace of these 
lessons. We read on it, in his pupil's handwriting : ' G-one 
out, aller dehors, sortir. Opened, ouvert. To see, voire (sic), 
regarder.' 

Napoleon's next professor, after how long an interval we 
cannot tell, was Countess Bertrand, daughter of General 
Arthur Dillon by Anne Laure Girardin, cousin to the 
Empress Josephine. She had never even visited England, 
but her father, guillotined when she was eight years of age, 
had probably taught her his native tongue. Napoleon, dis- 
posing of rich heiresses with Oriental despotism, had required 
her to marry Bertrand, one of his generals ; and though the 
poor girl was at first in despair and refused to see her suitor, 
she speedily became attached to him, and they lived happily 
ever after. One of their children, named Arthur, not, as 
one of the St. Helena narratives states, after the Duke of 
Wellington, but after the grandfather — was born on the 
island in January 1817, and archly introduced by the 
mother to Napoleon as ' the first Frenchman who had entered 
Longwood without a pass from Sir Hudson Lowe.' She was 
extremely fond of society, and though, with her husband, 
she had accompanied the Emperor to Elba, she was so averse 
to St. Helena that she stormed at Napoleon for involving 
Bertrand and his family in his banishment, and even tried 
to throw herself overboard. This, unlike some of her other 
antipathies, she never overcame, and at the time of Napoleon's 
death she was arranging for a return to France, on the plea 



TWO RESTORATIONS 313 

of getting her children educated. One of those children, 
whose ears were bored in Napoleon's presence that he might 
present her with earrings, survived, as Madame Thayer, 
widow of one of Napoleon lli.'s senators, till 1890. Madame 
Bertrandj apparently, gave a specimen of Napoleon's lessons 
to Madame Junot, whose grand- daughter, Madame de la 
Ferri^re, lent it to the recent exhibition. A sheet of letter 
paper, yellow with age, contains alternate lines of French 
and English ; but it will be more convenient to give first 
the theme, and then the translation, which has never yet 
been published. The italics in brackets indicate the erasures. 

' Quand serez-vous sage ? 

' Quand je ne serai plus dans cette ile. Mais je le de- 
viendrai apr^s avoir pass6 la ligne. 

' Lorsque je d6barquerai en france, je serai tr^s content. 
Ma femme viendra pr^s de moi, mon fils sera grand et fort, 
il pourra boire sa bouteille de vin k diner, je trinquerai avec 
lui. Ma m^re sera vieille, mes soeurs seront laides, ce qui ne 
leur sera pas agr^able, elles seront toujours coquettes, car les 
femmes se croient toujours jolies.' 

' When will you be wise ? 

' Never [then thaf] as long as I [should] could be in this 
isle, but I shall become vise after [have] having passed the 
line. When I shall [landed] land in france I shall be very 
content. Mi [wive] wife shall come [after, be/-] near me. 
Mi son shall be great and [fort] strong. He [shall get] will 
be able to take his bottle of wine at dinner. I shall trink 
with him. Mi mother shall be olde, mi sisters shall . . . 
for the women believe they . . .' 

The pronoun / is uniformly written y. The corrections 
are mostly inserted above the line, but some are a continua- 
tion of the line, showing that the translation was written in 
Madame Berf md's presence. The first sentence, it is 
evident, had jeen playfully uttered by her on account of 
Napoleon's ttasing her for being boisterously gay ; for it is 



314 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

the question addressed to obstreperous or fretful children, 
and Napoleon himself used to say to Betsy Balcombe, ' Quand 
seras-tu sage ? ' Sage does not here mean wise, but good or 
well behaved. Madame Bertrand passed over this and some 
other obvious blunders, either because her own English was 
defective, or because she would not discourage her pupil by 
too many corrections. At one corner of the sheet is a rude 
drawing of a ship, the imaginary ship in which Napoleon 
was to return to France, and in another corner is a sketch 
apparently meant for a line of muskets extended for firing. 
There are also the words, ' Qui vous a apport^ cette lettre 1 
(Who has brought you this letter 1) The writing is small 
and cramped, but fairly legible ; much more so than other 
specimens at the exhibition, such as the audit of Napoleon's 
accounts. The allegation that he wrote a scrawl to conceal 
his bad spelling seems far-fetched. Like many people, he 
had a hasty scrawl for drafts, which he was sometimes him- 
self unable to decipher, and a plainer hand for his corre- 
spondents. 

To quote from Manzoni's famous ode : — 

' He vanished, in a narrow isle 
His vacant days to keep, 
Object of boundless envy once, 
Now of compassion deep, 
Of inextinguishable ire 
And of unconquered love. ' 

There still survive two English witnesses of Napoleon's 
funeral, for Public Opinion of the 28tli March 1903 
contained a letter from Mr. G. B. Bennett of Cape 
Town, wlio states that he was born at St. Helena on 
the 30th November 1816, that he attended the 
funeral, and that his sister, three and a half months 
old, was also present in her nurse's arms. 



TWO RESTORATIONS 315 

The daughter of Sir Hudson Lowe, born at St. 
Helena in 1818, is also still living, unmarried, at 
Balham, near London. Considering, however, the 
strained relations between her father and Napoleon, 
she is scarcely likely, in her nurse's arms, to have 
seen the caged lion. 

PS. — Miss Clara Lowe died at Tooting on the 7th 
May 1904. 



APPENDIX 

A (see p. 34) 

MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT 



Asterisks indicate members not re-elected in 1802, and italics 
new members. 



Acheson, Arch., Armagh. 
Adair, Eohert, Camelford. 
Barclay, Sir Robert, Newton, 

Hants. 
Baring, Sir F., Chipping Wy- 
combe. 
*Beniield, Paul, Shaftesbury. 

Best, Wm. Dra-per, Petersfield. 
*Bird, Wm. Wilberforce, Coven- 
try. 
*Boyd, Walter, Shaftesbury. 
Brodrick, Wm., Whitchurch, 
Burdett, Sir R, Middlesex. 
Cavendish, Lord G. A. H., 
Derbyshire. 
■^Chambers, (Sir) Geo., Honiton, 
*Clarke, Edward, Wootton Bas- 
set. 
*Clifden, Viscount, Heytesbury. 
Gockerell, (Sir) Chas., Tregony. 
Combe, Alderman H., London. 
Covyper, Edward Spencer, Hert- 
ford. 
Gust, John, Clitheroe. 
Dalkeith, Lord, Ludgershall. 

SI 6 



*Dallas, Sir Geo,, Newport, LW. 
Dillon, Augustus, Mayo. 
Douglas, Marquis of, Lancaster. 
Egerton, Wm., Cheshire. 
Ellis, Chas. Rose, Seaford. 
Erskine, Thos., Portsmouth. 
Fitzgerald, Lord Rt, Kildare. 
Fitzpatrick, General, Tavistock. 
Foster, Jno. Leslie, Louth. 
Fox, Chas. Jas., Westminster. 
Francis, {Sir) Philip, Appleby. 
Frankland, Wm., Thirsk. 
Garland, George, Poole. 
Gower, Lord Granville Leveson, 

Staffordshire. 
Graham, Sir Jas., Ripon. 
Oraham, Jas., Cockermouth, 
Green, Wm., Dungarvan. 
Hamilton, Lord Arch., Lanark. 
*Hare, James, Knaresborough. 
Hinchtngbrook, Lord, Hunts. 
Huntingfield, Lord, Dunwich. 
Jekyll, Joseph, Calne. 
Johnstone, Geo., Heydon. 
Kinnaird. Chas., Leominster. 



APPENDIX 



817 



Knox, Hon. Geo., Dungannon. 

Lascelles, Edward, Northaller- 
ton. 

Loftus, Earl, Wexford. 

Long, Charles, Wendover. 

Lovaine, Lord, Beeralston. 

Machenzie-Fraser, Gen. Alex., 
Cromarty. 
*Macpherson, Sir John, Horsham. 

Mathew, Viscount, Tipperary. 

Montagu, Lord Fred., Hunts. 

Morgan, Sir Chas., Brecon. 

Morpeth, Viscount, Morpeth. 
*Morshead, Sir John, Bodmin. 
*]Sricholl, John, Tregony. 

Paget, Hon. Edw., Carnarvon. 
*Parnell, Henry, Maryborough. 

Pelham, Hon. Chas., Grimsby, 

Petty, Lord Henry, Calne. 
*Pollen, Col. G. A., Leominster. 
*Pringle, Mark, Selkirk. 
*Robson, Richard B., Oke- 
hampton. 



St. John, St. Andrew, Beds. 

Scott, Eon. Jno., Borough- 
bridge. 

Smith, John Spencer, Dover. 

Smith, William, Norwich. 

Spencer, Lord Eobert, Tavis- 
tock. 
*Sturt, Charles, Bridport. 

Thellusson, Chas., Evesham. 

Thellusson, Peter Isaac, Castle 

Rising. 
^Thompson, Thos., Evesham. 

Tierney, George, Southwark. 
*Tufton, Henry, Rochester. 
*Turner, Sir Gregory, Thirsk. 

Tyrwhitt, Thos., Portarlington. 

Villiers, Jno. Chas., Dartmouth. 
*WaIhope, Hon. Coulson, And- 

over. 
* Wallace, (Sir) Thomas, Penrhyn. 
*Waller, John, Limerick. 
*Wyndham, Chas., Shoreham. 

Yarmouth, Earl of, Lisburn. 



B (see p. 51) 
PEEKS 

An asterisk indicates that the wife accompanied her husband. 

Dukes — Bedford, Cumberland (Duchess), Gordon (Duchess), New- 
castle (and Dowager-Duchess), ^Somerset. 

Marquises — Bute,^ "^Donegal, *Tweeddale. 

Earls — Aberdeen, *Bessborough, *Beverley, Buckinghamshire, 
Cadogan (see p. 54), Caledon, Camelford, *Carhampton, Cavan, 
*Cholmondeley, Clarendon, *Conyngham, Cowper, Dysart (Countess), 
Egremont, *Elgin, *Fife, Fitzwilliam, Granard (Countess), *Guil- 
ford, *Kenmare, Kingston (Countess), Lanesborough (Countess), 

^ He seems to be the visitor who registered himself as Lord John 
Stuart. 



318 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Lauderdale, Longford, Mexborough (Countess), Minto, Mount 
Cashell, *Mount Edgecumbe, *Oxford, Pembroke, Pomfret, Sefton, 
Shaftesbury, *Shrewsbury, Winchilsea, Y arbor ough. 

Viscounts — Annesley (Viscountess), Barrington, Castlemaine, 
Falkland, Gosford, Maynard (Viscountess), Monck, Strangford. 

Barons— Bl&yaej, Boringdon, *Bradford, *Caliir, Carington 
(Baroness), Cloncurry, Coleraine, Crofton (Baroness), Grantham, 
*Holland, Hutchinson, Longford, *Montfort, Northwick, *Say and 
Sele, StaweU, *Whitworth. 

Eldest sons or other successors of Peers — General George Aber- 
cromby (son of Baroness Abercromby), William Annesley (Earl of 
Annesley), Archibald Acheson (Viscount Gosford), Viscount Althorp 
(Earl Spencer), Lord Charles Beaulieu (Earl of Beaulieu), Viscount 
Boyle (Earl of Glasgow), Viscount Brooke (Earl of Warwick), Lord 
John Campbell (Duke of Argyll), John Somers Cocks (Lord Somers), 
Earl of Dalkeith (Duke of Buccleuch), John De Blaquiere (Lord 
De Blaquiere), Augustus Dillon (Viscount Dillon), Marquis of 
Douglas (Duke of Hamilton), LordDuncannon (Earl of Bessborough), 
Sampson Eardley (Lord Eardley), Francis Henry Egerton (Earl 
of Bridge water), Viscount Fincastle (Earl of Dunmore), Admiral 
Garlies (Earl of Galloway), Lord Gustavus Hamilton (Viscount 
Boyne), Viscount Hinchingbrook (Earl of Sandwich), John Hely 
Hutchinson (Earl of Donoughmore), Charles Kinnaird (Lord Kin- 
naird), Edward Lascelles (predeceased the Earl of Harewood), 
Viscount Loftus (Marquis of Ely), Lord Lovaine (Earl of Beverley), 
Viscount Maitland (Earl of Lauderdale), Viscount Mathew (Earl 
of Landaff), Colonel W. J. Molesworth (Viscount Molesworth), 
Viscount Morpeth (Earl of Carlisle), Viscount Ossulston (Earl 
of Tankerville), Charles Pelliam (Lord Yarborough), Viscount 
Petersham ^ (Earl of Harrington), Lord Henry Petty (Marquis of 
Lansdowne), Dudley Ryder (Viscount Sandon, afterwards Earl of 
Harrowby), St. Andrew St. John (Lord St. John), John Scott 
(predeceased the Earl of Eldon), Admiral Tollemache (Countess of 
Dysart), John Hampden Trevor (Viscount Hampden), Charles Tufton 
(Earl of Thanet), Colonel John Vesey (Viscount de Vesci), John 
Charles Villiers (Earl of Clarendon) and Earl of Yarmouth (Marquis 
of Hertford), Several of these have been mentioned among actual 
or prospective M.P.'s. There was also Lady Ancrum, daughter-in-law 
of the Marquis of Lothian. 

^ A dandy famous for his collection of snuff-boxes, said to number 365. 



APPENDIX 319 

G (see p. 300) 
LOED JOHN EUSSELL AT ELBA 

I have been favoured by the Hon. Eollo Eussell with a 
copy, and permission to publish it, of the letter addressed in 
1868 by his father, Earl Eussell, to the eminent Belgian 
statesman, M. Van de Weyer. A few copies were then 
printed for private distribution. 

Pembroke Lodge : Nov. 28, 1868. 

My dear Van de Weyer, 

You wish to have some account of my visit to 
the First Napoleon at Elba. 

It is long since I paid that visit, and I can give you 
only glimmering recollections. 

I was at Florence in December 1814, with my father 
and his family. 

I wished very much to see Napoleon ; some of my 
friends had been to Elba ; a cousin of mine by marriage, 
Mr. Whitmore, was going there. 

I was told that the season was bad, and that I should 
do well to put off my journey till the spring. But I 
determined to go then. 

Colonel Campbell, the Commissioner of the British 
Government, was usually resident at Florence ; he was 
then returning to Elba, and a brig-of-war had been 
placed at his disposal. I was glad to take advantage 
of the opportunity. He told us on the way that 
Napoleon had sate up late at night, revising the list of 
the Municipal Council of Porto Ferrajo for the ensuing 
year. Colonel Campbell seemed to consider this cir- 
cumstance a proof that the deposed Emperor could be 
as busy upon a trifling affair as on the destinies of 
Europe. But no doubt Napoleon wished to have a 
municipality on whom he could rely in case of need. 



320 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

The first person Whitmore and I saw at Porto Ferrajo 
was General Bertrand, and he introduced us to his 
wife, a Dillon by birth. 

In conversation with General Bertrand, he asked us 
the meaning of a paragraph in the Courier newspaper, 
sent him by Colonel Campbell, to the effect that the 
Congress of Vienna had it in contemplation to send 
the Emperor to St. Helena. We had not seen the 
paragraph, and could not account for it. I have never 
referred to the Courier newspaper of that period to 
ascertain its wording, or guess at its origin. But it 
had evidently made a great impression on General 
Bertrand. 

In the evening of that day, about eight o'clock, I 
went to the house at the top of the town where 
Napoleon resided. He received me in his drawing- 
room. He was dressed in uniform — a green coat, 
single-breasted, white breeches, and silk stockings. I 
was much struck with his countenance — eyes of a 
muddy colour and cunning expression ; the fine 
features which we all know in his bust and on his 
coins ; and, lastly, a most agreeable and winning smile. 
He was very courteous in his manner. I was with 
him for a long time — I think an hour and a half. He 
stood the whole time, only sometimes leaning on the 
chimney-piece. 

What struck me most in his conversation was a 
certain uneasiness about his position — a suspicion that 
something serious was about to happen to him, and 
he seemed to have a desire to entrap me into giving 
him information which I was neither able nor willing 
to afford. With this view, as I supposed, he asked me 
a number of questions of little interest to him — such 
as, whether I was in the House of Commons or the 
House of Lords, whether my father had kept up much 



APPENDIX 321 

state as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and whether the 
Lady-Lieutenant had any dame d'honneur in her 
suite ? When I replied that she had only a young 
lady, who was her cousin, in the house with her, he 
remarked, ' C'etait une daTue de compagnie, pas une 
dame d'honneur.' These questions he would inter- 
sperse with eager enquiries respecting the state of 
France; and when I replied that I had not come 
through France, but by sea from Portugal, he would 
not let me off, but asked me what Lord Holland, whom 
I had seen at Florence, thought of French opinion — 
enquiring, with much emphasis, ' L'armee est-elle 
contente ? ' 

He spoke also of Italy ; and when I said that Italy 
had no union, and therefore would probably remain 
quiet, he said, ' C'est vrai.' I told him that I had 
heard everywhere, that during his reign the robberies 
and pillage, which had been so common before, had 
almost ceased ; he said quickly, ' C'etait la gendar- 
merie.' 

He seemed alarmed regarding his own safety, asking 
me, more than once, whether our Minister at Florence 
was a man to be trusted; whether fearing that he 
might be carried off by force, or wishing to obtain some 
assurance of safety and protection from Lord Burghersh, 
the British Minister, I cannot tell. I told him that 
Lord Burghersh had been attached, as a military officer, 
to one of the allied armies which had invaded France ; 
but of this he seemed to know nothing. 

It was evident to me that the paragraph in the 
Courier, which had been mentioned to me by General 
Bertrand, had been shown to Napoleon, and had 
produced a great impression upon him. He seemed to 
me to be meditating some enterprise, and yet very 
doubtful whether he should undertake it. When we 

X 



322 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

heard afterwards of his expedition from Elba, the 
Count de Mosbourg, a minister of Murat, was asked 
what could have induced Napoleon to run so great 
a hazard ; ' Un peu d'espoir et beaucoup de deses- 
poir,' was his reply. Such appeared to me to be, 
when I saw him, the state of his mind; and when I 
got to Rome, I wrote to my brother, Lord Tavistock, 
that I was sure Napoleon was thinking of some fresh 
attempt. 

Napoleon seemed very curious on the subject of 
the Duke of Wellington. He said it was a great 
mistake in the English Government to send him 
Ambassador to Paris. ' On n'aiTne pas voir un homtne 
par qui on a ete hattu.' He had never sent as 
Ambassador to Vienna a man who had entered Vienna 
as an officer of the French invading army. (Count 
Lebzeltern, the Austrian Ambassador at Rome, denied 
the truth of this assertion.) As I had seen a good 
deal of the Duke of Wellington in Spain, Napoleon 
asked me what were likely to be his occupations. I 
answered that during his campaigns the Duke had 
been so much absorbed by his attention to the war 
that I did not well understand how he could give his 
mind to other subjects. He remarked, rather sharply, 
as if he thought I was inclined to think lightly of 
military talents, 'Eh hien, c'est un grand jeu, telle 
occupation!' He spoke at some length of his plans 
respecting Spain. He would have divided the large 
landed properties in the hands of the grandees, of the 
monasteries, and of the clergy. He would have intro- 
duced into Spain the enlightened principles of religious 
toleration and facilitated commercial intercourse in the 
interior, etc. 

I said that I thought Spain was not ready for such 
changes, and that the Spanish people would resist 



APPENDIX 323 

them, 'lis succomheraient,' he said, and then the 
subject dropped. 

He asked me whether I knew anything of what was 
passing at the Congress of Vienna. I said, ' Nothing.' 
He said he expected that each Power would have 
confirmed to it by treaty the territories which its 
forces occupied. In respect to the three great miUtary 
Powers, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, this prediction 
was nearly verified. Mr. Pitt, however, had intended, 
in 1805, to give Belgium to Prussia ; Lord Castlereagh 
gave it to the Netherlands. 

Napoleon spoke of Lord Ebrington, whom he had 
recently seen, and said he was 'un homme fort 
instruit ; du Tnoins, il mi'a paru un homme fort 
instruit' It struck me afterwards that while he had 
spoken to Lord Ebrington of great events of his past 
life — of Jaffa, of the execution of the Due d'Enghien, 
and other acts on which the world had passed its 
judgment — he spoke to me almost entirely of the 
existing aspect of affairs. His past history had ceased 
to be his main object, and his mind was busy with 
the present and the future. He said, 'You must be 
very well satisfied, you English, to have finished the 
war so successfully.' I answered, 'Yes, Sire, especi- 
ally as at one time we thought ourselves in great 
danger,' 

He burst out laughing, 'Ha! ha! ha! C'etait le 
systeme continental, eh ? ' 

I said, ' Yes, Sire ; but as that system did not ruin us, 
it did us a great deal of good. For men are much 
governed by their physical wants.' 

The interview ended soon after this. The next 
morning I was told that a horse from the Emperor's 
stable was at my disposal, and I rode to a villa which 
he was constructing for his summer occupation. 



324 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

The day after I embarked, in the gun-brig in which 
I had come, for Civita Veechia, 

I remain, my dear Van de Weyer, 

Yours truly, 

RUSSELL. 

Lord J. Russell in his diary, wrote of Napoleon : — 

' His manner is very good-natured, and seems studied to put one 
at one's ease by its familiarity ; his smile and laugh are very agree- 
able ; he asks a number of questions without object, and often 
repeats them, a habit which he has no doubt acquired during fifteen 
years of supreme command. To this I should also attribute the 
ignorance he seems to show at times of the most common facts. When 
anything that he likes is said, he puts his head forward and listens 
with great pleasure . . . but when he does not like what he heSrs, 
he turns away as if unconcerned, and changes the subject. From 
this one might conclude that he was open to flattery and violent 
in his temper.' 

Sir Spencer Walpole in his Life of Lmd J. Russell, adds :— 

Lord John was with him [Napoleon] an hour and a half, con- 
versing on many subjects — the Russell family. Lord John's own allow- 
ance from the Duke, the state of Spain and Italy, the character of the 
Duke of Wellington, and the arrangements likely to be made at 
Vienna for the pacification of Europe. He used to say in his old 
age, that as the Emperor became interested in his conversation, he 
fell into the siagular habit which he had acquired, and pulled him 
by the ear. 



INDEX OF NAMES 

{Members of a family are mostly indexed together). 



Abbot, Speaker, 20, 132, 139, 161. 

Abdy, W., 65. 

Abercromby, 56, 60, 65, 219, 279, 

318. 
Aberdeen, Lord, 51, 54, 164, 317. 
Abrantes. See Junot. 
Acheson. See Gosford. 
Adair, Sir R., 29, 34, 240, 316. 
Adderley, 118. 
Addington, Hy., 170, 174. 
Adelaide, Qiieen, 118. 
Albany, Countess, 254, 276. 
Aldborough, Lady, 277. 
Alderson, Dr., 209. 
Alexander i., 156, 286, 298. 
Alfieri, F., 254. 
Alison, Sir A., 274. 
Allen, Jobn, 114. 
Althorp, Lord, 48, 51, 99, 818. 
Ambert, Dr. Antoine, 80. 
Ancrum, Lady, 236, 318. 
Anderson, James, 115. 
Andreossi, General, 86, 175. 
Anglesey. See Paget. 
Angouleme, Duchess, 287, 307. 
Annesley, 13, 61, 130, 196, 209, 235, 

261, 318. 
Anspach, Margrave, 239. 
Antraigues, Comte d', 6, 75. 
Apreece, S. A., 65, 118. 
Apsley. See Bathurst. 
Arago, F., 256. 
Arblay. See Burney. 
Archer, Jno. , 258. 
Armstrong, Dr. , 265. 

Sergeant, 16. 

Arnim, A. , 159. 
Artois. See Charles x. 
Ashburton. ^ee Baring. 
Ashley, 150. 

Lady M. A., 43. 

Ashworth, Sir C, 65. 
Astley, Philip, 99, 212. 



Atkinson. T. W., 235. 
Atkyns, Mrs., 94. 
Aufrere, A., 114. 
Aulard, F. A., 76. 
Aumale, Mme. d', 233. 
Auvergne, V. d', 71. 
Aylesbury, Lord, 278. 
Aylmer, Gerald, 66, 257. 
Aytoun, 245. 

Babeau, a., 101. 

Bacon, Lord, 310. 

Badams, Dr., 101. 

Badger, L. and P., 81. 

Baggesen, J., 157. 

Bagration, General, 67. 

Baird, Dr., 209. 

Balcombe, Betsy, 311, 314. 

Baldwin, S., 149. 

Bance, A. , 215. 

Bandon, Lord, 291. 

Banks. Sir J., 85-87, 169, 224, 252. 

J. C, 14, 243. 

Bannatyne, Captain, 201. 

Barbauld, Mrs., 89. 

Barclay, Sir R., 17, 34, 316. 

Barillon, Marquis, 29. 

Baring, 34, 48, 96, 316. 

Barklimore, Dr., 216. 

Barlow, Joel, 6, 105, 127. 

Barney, Joshua, 6. 

Barras, P., 13, 146, 148, 310. 

Barrington, Bishop, 136. 

- — Lord, 58, 197, 202, 318. 

Barthelemi, Abbe, 128. 

Bartolini, L., 160. 

Bath, Lord, 277. 

Bathurst, Captain B., 66, 243, 275. 

Lord, 277. 

Beasely, Reuben, 258. 
Beauclerk, Lady C, 64, 168. 
Beaufort, Duchess, 241. 
Beauharnais, Eugene, 53, 160. 

325 



326 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 



Beaulieu, Lord C, 318. 

Beaune, de, 285. 

Beauvoisin, Colonel, 171. 

Beccaria, 160, 256. 

Becker, Casimir, 19. 

Beckford, W., 46, 111. 

Bedford. See Russell, Lord J. 

Bellevue, Countess, 122. 

Belvedere, Lord, 57, 102. 

Benfield, P., 34, 36, 96, 216, 235, 

316. 
Benjafleld, 22. 
Bennett, G. B., 314. 
Bentham, Jeremy, 80, 85. 
Bentinck, H. W., 78. 

Rev. John, 260. 

LordW., 61,278,295. 

Benyon, 48. 
Berkeley, G., 217. 
Bernadotte, Marshal, 7. 
Bernard, 189. 

Sir F., 109. 

R. B.,'290. 

Bernardinde St. Pierre, J. H., 115. 
Berri, Duke and Duchess, 67, 289. 
Berry, Agnes and Mary, 38. 70, 117, 

179, 214, 223. 

Sir E., 73. 

Berthier, Marshal, 162, 171, 186, 

253. 
Bertin, Rose, 131. 
Bertrand, General H. G., 302, 309, 

312, 320, 321. 
Berwick. See Hill, W. 
Besnard, 133. 

Bessborough. See Duncannon. 
Best, Captain, 55. 

See Wynford. 

Beugnot, J. C, 289. 
Beverley. See Lovaine. 
Beyle, H., 128. 
Bickersteth, H., 117. 
Billington, Elizabeth, 170. 
Binning. See Haddington. 
Bird, W. W., 316. 
Birkbeck, G., 80. 

M., 277, 282, 288. 

Bishop, Mary, 238. 
Blackwell, J., 151, 152, 
Blagden, Sir C, 86. 
Blagdon, F. W., 101. 
Blanc, 189. 

Louis, 108. 

Bland, Rev. R., 235. 

Blandford, Lord, 43, 277. 

Blangini, Jos., 130. 

Blayney, Lord, 11, 48, 59, 189, 199. 

203, 244, 245, 265, 318. 



Blaze de Bury, Mme., 273. 
Blessington, Lady, 193. 
Blount, Baron Chas., 210. 

235. 

Boddington, E. W., 92, 
Bode, 130, 

Bodichon, Mme., 42. 
Bodini, 121. 
Boshme, J., 158. 
Bolivar, S., 152, 156. 
Bonaparte, Jerome, 78, 193. 

Joseph, 20, 220, 306. 

Lucien, 228. 

Mme. See Josephine. 

Napoleon, passim. 

Pauline, 302, 310. 

Victor, 309. 

Bonfield, 91. 

Bonnecarrere, G. de, 171. 
Bonneuil, Mme., 171. 
Bonneval, General, 231. 
Bonneville, N., 100. 
Bonnycastle, J., 87. 
Borel, Mrs., 239. 
Boringdon, Lord, 318. 
Boscawen, Admiral Edward, 241. 
Bosville, W., 36, 66. 
Boswell, 149. 

James, 33, 105. 

Bouillon. See Auvergne, 
Bourbon, Due, 3. 
Bourke, B. de, 258. 

J. R., 258. 

Bowyer, R.. 92. 

Boyd, Walter, 14, 34, 36, 96, 216, 

265, 316. 
Boyer, Captain, 32. 

General J. P., 222. 

Boyle, Lord, 238, 318. 

R. B.,27. 

Boyne. See Hamilton, 
Boyse, E., 246. 
Brabangon, General, 216, 
Bradford, Lord, 57, 277, 318. 
Braham, J., 14. 
Bridgewater. See Egerton. 
Brillat-Savariu, A., 4. 
Bristol, Lord, 62, 248, 
Brocklesby, R., 88. 
Brodie, Captain, 200. 
Brodrick, W., 36, 61, 316. 
Brodum, William. 23. 
Brook, 78. 
Brooke, Lord, 51, 318. 

T., 203, 210. 

Brougham, Lord, 18, 19, 85, 88, 273. 
Broughton, Sir J. , 65, 212. 
See Hobhouse. 



INDEX OF NAMES 



327 



Browning, Oscar, 10, 175 
Brownlow, Lord, 57, so, ^<»' 
Bruce, Countess, 239 

Lieutenant Michael, Zli>. 

Bryant, George, 92. 

Buckingham, Duke, 42. 

Buckinghamshire, Lord, 6i.(. 

Bulow, T. H., 159. 

Buonarotti, M., 6. 

Burdett, Sir F., 36, 64, 66, 133, 24i, 

310, 316. 
Burgess, Rev. J., 168. 

Burgh or Burke 261. 

Burghersh, Lord, ^7», Oiii. 

Burke, Edmund, 34, 50. 

General F., 66. 

Burlington, Lord, 36, 121. 

Burney, Fanny, 4, 123 

Burrell, SirC.,48, 1/9. 

Burton, Sir F., 64. 

Bute, Lord, 242, 317. 

Butler, Baron, 258. 

Colonel, 251. 

Butterfield, 212. 

Byrne, Miles, 187. 

Byron, Lord, 22, 54, 170, 303, 308. 

■ Cadogan, Lady, 54, 178, 611. 
Cadoudal. See Georges. 
Cahir, Lord, 59, 318. 

Callender, General J-, 0°) '^^6. 
Calonne, C. de, 124, 134. 
Cambaceres, J. J., |1- 
Cambridge, Duke, rf7. 
Camelford, luord, 14 54, 146, 317 
Cameron, Doctor, 209. 
Campbell, 296. 

ZZ Doctor (Edward?), 265. 

= Lord j!'51, 179, 318. 

Sir Neil, 303, 319, 320. 

Thomas, 274, 281. 

Campe,J. H.,156 164 
Candler, Captain T 244. 
Canning, George, 16, 33, 11», ^/»' 
Canova, A., 274. 

Cantillon, Andre N , d9. 

Caraccioli, L. A., 161. 

Caradoc. Sei Cradock. 

Carducci, Barth., 97. 

Carhampton Lord, 46 317. 

Carington Lord 59 278 318 

Carlisle, Lord, 16, 40, 277, 6^6, 
318. 



Carnot, Lazare, 85, 90, 128, 152, 225, 

273. 
Caroline, Queen, 286. 
Carr, Sir J., 101, 125, 128, 142. 

Carter, Anne, 240. 
Carysfort, Lord, 17. 
Casimir Perier, 109. 
Casti, J.B.,161. 
Castlemame, Lord, <5i». 
Castlereagh, Lord, 272. 
Cathcart, Lord, 275. 
Caulfeild,St. G.,168 
Cavan, Lord, 56, 68, fl'- 
Cavendish, Lord G., ol, dio. 

See Burlington. 

Cazales, J. A., 125. 
Cerutti, J. A. J., 6. 
Chalmers, 190. 

Chambers, Sir R., 79, 168, 316. 
Champagny, J. B., 220. 
Champernowne, A. H., 4»- 
Chantrey, SirF.,274. 
Chaptal, J. A., 31. 
Charlemont, Lord, 277. 
Charles X., 2, 67, 274 278. 
XIV. See Bernadotte. 
. Edward, Prince, 177- 

J. A. C, 128. 

Charlotte, Princess, 7, loo- 

Queen, 284. 

Chastenay.Mme.de, 280. 
Chateaubriand, F. R. de, 71, 90, ■I^'^j 

143, 224. 
Chatham, Lord, 32. 
Chatterton, Thomas, 115. 
Chenevix, R., 13, 85, 227, 229. 
Chenier, Andr6, 91. 
Cherubini, L. C, 129. 
Chevreul, 243. 
Chichester, Sir A., 49. 

gjj. J 54 

Childers, Hugh C. E 61 200 
Cholmondeley, Lord, 56, ld8, ioi, 

164, 317. 
Christie, J. H., 214. 

Thomas, 6. 

Churchill, Rev. W. H 232. 
Clanricarde, Lord, Alo. 
Clare, Lord, 277. 
Clarendon. See Villiers. 

^l!!'G'eneri'?l:if,198,203,235, 
245 247, 254, 262, 265, 266. 

— Mrs., 237. 

— Sir Simon, 64. 

Dr. T., 208. 

Clarkson, Thomas 275. 
Clavering, SirT.,64,234. 



328 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 



Clayton, Sir W., 278. 
Cleveland, Duke, 54. 
Clifden, Lord, 316. 
Cliflford, Robert, 61, 198. 
Clive, Colonel Robert, 61, 198. 
Cloncurry, Lord, 59, 64, 93, 318. 
Cloots, Anacharsis, 6, 164. 
Cobbett, William, 18, 66. 
Cockburn, Alexander, 77, 228. 
Cockerell, Sir C, 65, 316. 
Cockerill, William, 258. 
Cocks, J. Somers, 318. 
Coghill, Sir J., 64, 235. 
Colchester, Lord. See Abbot. 
Colclough, Caesar, 48, 266. 
Cole, Lord, 275. 
Coleraine, Lord, 318. 
Coleridge, S. T., 90, 94, 99, 184. 
Colin, 272. 
Colombine, P., 260. 
Combe, George, 274. 

Alderman Thomas, 29, 37, 316. 

William, 113. 

Compton, Lord, 277. 
Concannon, John, 196. 
Congleton, Lord. See Parnell. 
Congreve, Sir W., 48, 65, 94. 
Constant, Benjamin, 142, 243, 306. 
Constantine, Grand Duke, 292. 
Contat, Louise, 129. 
Conti, Prince, 241. 
Conway, Field-Marshal, 92. 
Conyngham, Lord, 56, 64, 130, 317. 
Cook, Captain James, 233. 
Cooper, Sir Paston, 81. 

Sir W., 64, 197. 

Cope, Archdall, 235. 

Reilly, 201, 263. 

Copleston, Bishop, 276, 291. 

Copley, J. S., 107. 

Coquebert, C. E., 171. 

Corbett, William, 151-152, 308. 

Cornuel, Mrs., 238. 

Cornwallis, Lord, 18-21, 83, 136, 186, 

Corvisart, Dr., 226. 

Cory, Captain, 199. 

Cosway, R., 91,113, 140. 

Cotes, Captain, 16. 

Cotton, Lady A., 277. 

Courier, P. L. , 234. 

Courselles, Colonel, 204, 214. 

Courtenay. See GifiFard. 

Coutts, Thomas, 242. 

Coventry, Lord, 277. 

Cowley, Lord, 16. 

Cowper, Lord, 37, 61, 316, 317. 

Cox, Colonel William, 235. 

Cradock, General, 67, 91. 



Cramer, F., 234. 

Crane, 238. 

Craufurd, Sir C, 49, 54. 

Sir J., 64, 77, 151, 192, 207, 

263. 

Quintin, 6, 49, 115, 130, 191, 

286, 306, 308. 

Craven, Lord, 61, 239. 
Crespigny, 46, 168, 210. 
Cr6ssw6ll 149 
Croft, Sir H.,' 13, 64, 115, 235,287, 

308. 
Crofton, Lady, 59, 168, 318. 
Croker, John Wilson, 58, 272. 
Cromie, Sir M., 64, 264. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 243. 
Crowe, William, 244. 
Cumberland, Duchess, 46, 51, 317. 
Curran, J. P., 79, 154, 274. 
Cust, Francis, 61, 316. 
Cuvier, Baron, 129, 225. 
Czartoryski, Prince, 256. 

Dalhousie. See Ramsay. 
Dalkeith, Lord, 316, 318. 
Dallas, SirG., 37, 64, 316. 
Dalrymple, General Robert, 68. 
Damer, Anne S., 32, 92, 117, 179, 

274, 306. 
Daniel, Rev. John, 235. 
Daniell, Thomas, 92. 
Darnley, Lord, 277. 
Davies, 149. 

Lady C, 172. 

Davis, Dr. J. B.,81, 197, 226. 

Davy, Sir H., 99. 

Dawes, William, 98. 

Dawtram, 129. 

De Bathe, Sir J., 13, 64. 230. 

De Blaquiere, Lord, 233, 263, 318. 

Decres, Admiral Denis, 162. 

De Jersey, C, 208. 

Delacroix, Charles, 153. 

Del Campo, Marquis, 256. 

Delille, J., 170. 

Demidoif, Princess, 156. 

Denou, D. V., 143. 

Derby, Lord, 303. 

De Ros, 13. 

Desbrieres, Colonel, 188. 

Desgenettes, Dr. N., 87. 

Deshayes, 130. 

Desmarest, P. M., 74, 102, 189. 

Despard, E. M., 171. 

Devenish, Thomas, 200. 

Devereux, John, 152. 

De Vesci. See Vesey. 

Devon. See Giffard. 



i 



INDEX OF NAMES 



329 



Devonshire. See Burlington. 

Duke and Duchess, 38, 53, 62, 

169, 277. 

Dickinson, William, 92, 246. 

Didot St. Leger, Jules, 172. 

Digby, Lord, 120. 

Dillon, Archbishop, 82. 

Arthur, 128, 309. 

Augustus, 316, 318. 

Edward, 235, 277. 

Henrv. 214, 240. 

Disney-Ffytche, D., 119. 

Dixie, SirB., 64, 208. 

Dodwell, Edward, 248. 

Don, Sir A., 65, 151, 211, 212. 

Donegal Lord, 54, 236, 317. 

Donkin, 78. 

Donoughmore. See Hutchinson. 

Dorant, 100. 

Dormer, 13. 

Dorset, Duchess, 22, 52. QQ, 175-176, 
220. 

Doublet, P. de, 97. 

Douglas, Sir Charles, 51. 

Hon. Frederick S. N., 295. 

Marquis, 37, 169, 244, 316, 318. 

Sir Niel, 296. 

Downshire, Lord, 277. 

Drake, Francis, 75. 

Dring, Rev. J., 260. 

Drummond, Henry, 40. 

Maurice, 172. 

Dubarry, Mme., 43, 47, 97, 229. 

Dubufe, 180. 

Duckett, William, 154. 

Dudley, Lord, 279, 291. 

Dugard, William, 105. 

Dumaresq, Major, 72. 

Dumont, Etienne, 6. 

Dumouriez, General, 26. 

Duncannon, Lord, 49, 54, 224, 303, 317. 

Dunmore. See Hutchinson and Fin- 
castle. 

Dunsany. See Lawless. 

Dupin, Maurice, 53, 131, 137. 

Du Pan. See Mallet. 

Duppa, William, 79, 92. 

Dupuis, C. F., 128. 

Durfort, Comte, 37. 

Du Roure, Scipio, 144. 

Eardley, Lord, 60, 229. 318. 
Ebrington, Lord, 33, 53,126, 297-299, 

323 
Bdgeworth, R. L., 22, 32, 80, 235. 
Edwards, William, 217. 
Egerton, F. H., 51, 63, 113, 152, 166, 

179, 190, 304, 308, 318. 



Egremont, Lord, 45, 56, 316, 317. 

Eldon. See Scott, J, 

Elgin, Lord, 26, 56, 80, 88, 219, 221, 

227, 317. 
Ellice, Felix, 200. 
Elliot. See Minto. 
Elliott, 151. 
Ellis, C. and G., 16, 37, 316. 

Mrs. Charles, 168. 

Elphinstone, Lord, 172. 

Ely. See Loftus. 

Emly. See Monsell. 

Emmet, R. and T. A., 59, 79, 153, 

186. 
Enghien, Due, 3, 177, 217, 249, 250, 

311, 323. 
Enniskillen. See Cole. 
Erskine, Cardinal Charles, 82. 
Lord, 29, 33, 37. 45, 79, 91, 101, 

298, 316. 
Essex, Lord, 278. 
Estaing, Comte d', 4. 
Este, 13, 141. 
Estob, Lucy, 142, 
Estwick, 199. 
Eugenie, Empress, 259. 
Eustace, Rev. J. C, 83, 291. 

John Skey, 6. 

Ewart, Joseph, 98. 
Exeter, Lord, 277. 
Eyre, E. J., 93, 165, 201. 
LadyM., 168. 

Fabre, p. X., 254. 

Fabricius, J. C, 159. 

Pagan, 123. 

Fagniani, J. B., 45. 

Falkland, Lord, 318. 

Faraday, Sir M., 243. 

Farel, 180. 

Farina, J. M., 157. 

Parington, J., 92. 

Farnborough, Lord, 39, 317. 

Fauriel, Claude, 80. 

Pauvelet, 171. 

Fazakerley, J. N., 273. 

Featherstonehaugh, Sir H., 46, 52, 

179. 
Felissent, 170. 
Fellowes, W. D., 277. 
Ferdinand IV., 3. 
Fereau, Mile., 234. 
Ferguson, Robert, 49, 222, 227. 
Fermor, 13. 

Ferrier, James, 68, 638. 
Fievee, Joseph, 170. 
Fife, Lord, 56, 317. 
Filon, Auguste, 114. 



330 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 



Fincastle, Lord, 318. 

Fingall, Lord, 63. 

Fitzgerald, C. and R, 258. 

Lords E. and K, 51, 111, 154, 

240, 247, 248, 316. 
Fitzherbert, Maria Anne, 13. 
Fitzjames, Due de, 125. 
Fitzpatrick, General Richard, 37, 45, 

62, 316. 
Fitzroy, Lady A., 37. 
Fitzwilliam, Lord, 56, 317. 
Flaxman, J., 92. 
Fleming, Dr. John, 87. 
Fleury, Duchesse, 15. 
Flin, Robert, 92. 
Flint, J. M., 149. 

William, 259. 

Flood, Peter, 83. 
Forbes, Lord, 277. 

James, 11, 119, 123, 166, 194, 

201, 206, 225. 

Forster, George, 6. 

Forsyth, Joseph, 226. 

Fortescue. See Ebrington. 

Forth, N. P., 247. 

Foscolo, Ugo, 276. 

Foster, Lady E. and Sir A., 62, 169, 

227, 277. 

J. Leslie, 38, 316. 

Fouche, Joseph, 23, 74, 123, 131, 189, 

192, 240, 290. 
Fox, 149. 

Charles James, 28, 34, 37, 41, 

45, 52, 79, 86, 94, 102, 112, 219, 
220, 225, 264, 298, 306, 316. 

General H. E., 68. 

Francis I., 286. 

Sir P., 38, 45, 316. 

Frankland, William, 316. 

Frederick ii. , 56. 

Frederick William iii. and iv., 286, 

298. 
Fremantle, Major, 284. 
Fries, J. F., 158, 
Frisell, J. Fraser, 116, 193. 
Frohberg, Count, 252. 
Frost, John, 44. 
Fulton, Robert, 127. 
Fursy-Guesdon, Alexander, 224. 

Gage, General Thomas, 207. 
Gainsborough, Thomas, 62. 
Galignani, John Ant., 149, 206, 288. 
Galitzin, Prince, 156. 
Galloway. See Garlics. 
Gallwey, Henry, 258. 
Gamble, John, 172. 
Garat, J. P., 130. 



Garland, George, 316. 

Nathaniel, 203, 225. 

Garlies, Lord, 318. 

Garnerin, A. J., 170. 

Garrow, Sir W., 223. 

Gavazzi, P. 257. 

Gay, Sophie, 171. 

GenUs, Mme. de, 132, 156, 162, 191, 

247. 
George in., 15, 73, 78, 81, 86, 94, 
175, 182, 209, 251, 288, 300. 

IV., 39, 45, 56, 118, 147, 169, 170, 

198, 219, 236, 249, 264, 286, 310. 
Georges, 74, 98, 129, 143. 
Gideon, Sampson, 60. 
Giffard, T. and Lady, 64. 
Gifford, John, 114, 214. 
Gillray, James, 29. 
Ginguene, P. L., 260. 
Gladstone, W. E., 54, 98. 
Glasgow. See Boyle. 
Glasse, Rev. John, 84. 
Glenbervie, Lord, 295. 
Glengall. See Cahir. 
Godfrey, Misses, 54, 236. 
Godrich, Lord (afterwards Ripon). 

See Robinson, F. J. 
Goethe, J. W., 87. 
Goldsmith, Lewis, 74, 104, 109, 153, 

171, 225, 311. 
Goold, Valentine, 198. 
Gordon, 244. 

Duchess, 52, 57, 84, 137, 162, 

164, 179, 317. 

Lord George, 151. 

Gosford, Lord, 34, 277, 316, 318. 

Gourbillon, Mme., 247. 

Gower. See Leveson-Gower. 

Graham, 248. 

Sir James, 38, 316. 

Thomas, 247. 

Grainville, J. B. , 115. ^ 

Granard, Lady, 56, 317. 

Grand, G. F., 40, 119, 132. 

Grant, Sir Alexander, 64. 

Grantham, Lord, 51, 59, 318. 

Granville, Lord, 16, 38, 316. 

Grasilier, L.. 10, 250. 

Grattan, H.,' 273, 302. 

Gravina, Duke, 73. 

Greathead, Henry, 94, 231. 

Greatheed, B., 84, 90, 113, 231. 

Green, James, 178, 205. 

William, 316. 

Gregoire, Bishop, 141, 276. 

Greig, Admiral A., 244. 

Grenville, Lord, 42, 55, 75, 114, 171, 
298. 



INDEX OF NAMES 



331 



Greville, Charles, 57, 64. 

Grey, Lord, 273, 303. 

Grieve, George, 6. 

Guilford, Lord, 26, 56, 242, 303, 317. 

Guillet, 33, 

Guitant, 116. 

Guizot, F., 128. 

Gurney, HudsoB, 49, 88. 

Gustavus IV., 275. 

Haddington, Lord, 277. 
Haines, Misses, 149. 
Haldimand, William, 50. 
Hallam, Henry, 115. 
Halpin, John Edward, 233. 
Hamersley, H., 50, 96, 97. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 89, 158, 226. 

Lord A., 61, 133, 208, 316. 

Duke, 62, 

George, 13, 115. 

Lord Gustavus, 318. 

Sir W., 216. 

Lady, 278. 

See Douglas. 

Hampden, John, 32, 

See Trevor. 

Hardenberg, Baron C. A,, 159, 256. 
Hardi, General J. , 26. 
Hardy, Thomas, 14. 
Hare, James, 316. 

Sir Thomas, 38, 65, 227. 

Harewood. See Lascelles. 
Harrington. See Petersham. 
Harris, E. B., 26. 
Harrowby, Lord. See Eyder, 
Hartley, J. G., 307. 
Harvey, Sir Eliab, 72. 

Elizabeth, 143. 

Hastfer, Mme. , 159. 
Hastings, G. W., 235. 

Warren, 37, 243, 248. 

Hawkesbury. See Liverpool. 

Hawthorn, Dr., 209. 

Hay, Mrs., 237. 

Haydon, B. R., 264, 276, 282, 288, 

289. 
Hayes, M. A. and E. , 92. 

William, 99. 

Hayne, William, 247. 
Hazlitt, William, 114. 
Heath, C. and J., 93,233. 
Heger, Joseph, 129. 
Heine, S., 157. 
Hendry, Robert, 260. 
Henry iv., 288. 
Henson, 212. 
Herbert, Sidney, 58. 
Herddia, F. de, 256. 



Herries, 97. 

Herschel, Sir W., 85, 87. 
Hertford. See Yarmouth, 
Hesse, Landgrave, 67. 
Hickie, 149. 
Higginson, Lady, 137, 
Hill, Lord, 277. 

William, 21. 

Colonel, 210. 

Hinchingbrook, Lord, 316, 318. 
Hobart, 13. 

See Mount Edgecumbe. 

Hobhouse, J. Cam, 303, 305, 308. 
Hoche, General Joseph, 55. 
Hodgson, Rev. T., 22, 176. 
Hodson, 150. 
Hogarth, Dr., 265. 
HohenzoUern, Princess, 157. 
Holcroft, Thomas, 80, 89, 100, 139, 

160, 166, 168, 171. 
Holland, Lord, 28, 37, 60, 93, 114, 

140, 177, 278, 283, 318, 321. 
Hompesch, Baron, 68. 
Honywood, Sir J., 64. 
Hope, Sir John, 64. 

Thomas, 26, 113, 

Hopkinson, B. J., 258, 
Hoppner, John, 92. 
HorneTooke, J., 14, 65, 85, 100. 
Hoste, Sir William, 73. 
Howden, See Cradock. 
Hudson, Thomas, 211, 
Hughes, W., 84, 166, 
Hugo, Victor, 136. 
Humboldt, W., 157. 
Hume, Sir A., 39, 46, 88. 

Dr. J. R., 277. 

Hunt, Leigh, 87, 287. 
Hunter, Mrs. Orby, 137. 

William, 27. 

Huntingford, Lord, 316, 
Huntingtower. See Tollemache, 
Hurry, 214. 
Hutchinson, Lord, 60, 318. 

200. 

Hyde de Neville, J. G., 139. 

ILCHBSTER, Lord, 277. 
Impey, Sir B., 46, 95, 230, 285. 
Ingilby, Sir J., 46, 64, 
Innes, Consul, 293, 
Irnham, Lord, 46. 

Jackson, F, and G., 20, 21, 55, 100, 

130, 132, 139. 
Jacobi, P., 157. 
James ii., 29, 
James, Sir W., 62, 



332 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 



Jay, John, 155. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 13, 139. 
Jekyll, Joseph, 39, 45, 316. 
Jenner, Dr. E., 80, 225, 246. 
Jerningham, C, 65, 122, 138, 142, 235. 
Jersey, Lady, 296. 
Jervis, John, 73, 235. 
Jessopp, J. S., 119, 138. 
Joan of Arc, 182. 
Jodrell, F. and T., 64, 210. 
Johnson, Dr., 79, 115, 149. 
Johnston, Colonel, 227. 

Dr., 81. 

W. and D., 258. - 

Johnstone, George, 39, 316. 
Jomini, Baron Heni-i, 7. 
Jones, Dr., 265. 

Paul, 6, 70. 

Rev., 292. 

Jordan, Rev., 197. 

Josephine, Empress, 91, 100, 117, 

175, 224, 225, 228. 243, 312. 
Joubert, Joseph, 116. 
Junot, Marshal, 32, 131, 178, 194, 

232, 275, 313. 
Jurien de la Graviere, Admiral, 262. 

Kaunitz, Prince, 6. 
Kemble, J. P., 93, 140. 
Kenmare, Lord, 56, 317. 
Kennedy, W. B., 100. 
Kent, Duke, 117, 180. 
Ker, Walter, 14, 35. 
Kilmorey, Lord, 68. 
King, Frances, 109, 161. 

John, 30, 100, 150, 166. 

Rufus, 155. 

Kingston, Countess, 56, 317. 
Kinnaird, Lord, 39, 277, 316, 318. 
Kirby, Dr. Walter, 261. 
Kirkpatrick, Mme. , 238. 

William, 258. 

Kirkwall, Lady, 263. 
Kirwan, W. B., 27. 
Klenke, Helmine, 159. 
Klopstock, F. T., 157. 
Knatchbull, Sir J., 278. 
Knight, 144. 

Cornelia, 143. 

Knox, General John, 16. 

George, 61, 317. 

Waring, 197. 

210. 

Kock, J. G. de, 6. 

Kosciusko, Thaddeus, 59, 85, 105, 

130, 141, 156. 
Kreutzer, Rod., 130. 
Krudener, Mme. de, 156. I 



Krumholz, Mme., 43. 
Kyd, SteAvart, 79, 216. 

Lafayette, Marquis, 32, 38, 60, 70, 
85, 244, 276. 

Laharpe, J. F., 90. 

Lalande, J. J. L., 128. 

Lale, 189. 

Lally ToUendal, Gerard, 5, 124. 

Lamartine, A., 128, 182. 

Lamb, Charles, 129. 

Lambert, 231. 

La Metherie, Jean, 133. 

Lammenais, F. de, 233. 

Lamoignon, C. F. de, 143. 

LaMotte, Mme., 124. 

Lancaster, Frances, 142. 

Rev. T., 159. 

Landaff, Lord, 279, 318. 

Landor, W. S., 112. 

Lanesborough, Lady, 57, 89, 102-104 
317. 

Langdale, Lord, 117. 

Langton, Roger, 245. 

Lansdowne, Lord, 40, 277, 303, 317 
318. 

Laplace, P. S., 129, 273. 

Larochefoucauld, Due, 153. 

La Reveilliere Lepeaiix, 36. 

Las Cases, G. P. B., 311, 312. 

Lascelles, Edward, 317, 318. 

Latouche, Elizabeth, 102. 

Lattin, P., 154. 

Lauderdale, Lord, 50, 51, 54, 57, 220, 
259, 303, 318. 

Lauriston, Marquis, 18, 123. 

Lauzun, Due, 15. 

Lavalette, A. M. C. , 275. 

Lavie, Sir T., 64, 241, 245. 

Law, William, 158. 

Lawless. See Burton, Dunsany, and 

Whaley. 
Lawrence, J. H., 11, 209, 232, 259. 
Leake. See Martin-Leake. 
Leatham, John, 260. 
Lebrun, Consul C. F. , 31, 111, 114, 
Lebzeltern, Count, 322. 
Lechevalier, J. B., 36, 133. 
Lee, Rev. Launcelot, 233. 
Legouve, Ernest, 309. 
Lemaistre, J. G., 51, 101. 
Lemoine, General John, 296. 
Lempriere, Miss, 237. 
Leopold, King, 7, 155. 
Leorat, 270. 
Leslie, Sir J., 275. 

Leveson-Gower. See Granville and 
Sutherland. 



INDEX OF NAMES 



333 



Lesseps, M. de, 259. 

Leviscourt, Li8^^tenant, 209. 

Lewins, E. J., 153, 186. 

Lewis, SirG. C, 118. 

Liddell, SirT., 130. 

Lind, William, 258. 

Lindsay, Mrs., 142. 

Linwood, Mary, 93. 

Listen, Sir C. , 78. 

Littlehales Baker, Sir E., 18. 

Littleton, E. J. , 278. 

Liverpool, Lord, 73, 78, 221, 251, 

285. 
Livingston, Eobert, 155, 227. 
Loftus, Lord, 317, 318. 
Long. See Farnborough. 

286. 

Longford, Lord, 318. 
Lothian. See Ancrum. 
Louis, Baron L. D. , 290. 

XVI., 2, 156, 169, 192, 284, 288. 

xviiL, 2, 75, 94, 238, 281, 283, 

284, 286-298. 
Louis Philippe, King, 2, 13, 67, 131, 

166, 169, 247, 284. 
Lovaine, Lord, 13, 40, 51, 54, 205, 

224, 261. 264, 317, 318. 
Lovelace, Robert, 68, 233. 
Lowe, SirH., 311, 315. 
Lucan, Lord, 277. 
Luttrell, Temple, 46, 168. 
Lynch, J. B., 307. 

214. 

Lyndhurst, Lord, 107. 
Lyster, C. H., 283. 

Macaulat, Lord, 114. 
— - Z. and General, 275, 285. 
MacCabe, W. P., 154. 
MacCarthy, 199. 
MacCulloch, 190. 
Macdermott, 149 
Macdonald, Marshal, 18. 
Macdonnal, Dr., 81. 
Mackenzie, General C. A. , 260. 

Admiral George, 289. 

Mackenzie -Eraser, General A., 317. 
Mackintosh, Sir J. , 50, 117, 273, 303. 
Mackworth, Sir H. , 77. 
Maclaurin, Dr. J. C., 22, 81, 176. 
Maclean, Charles, 80, 178, 225. 
Macleod, Colonel, 243. 
MacMahon, P. , 257. 

Terence, 235. 

Macnab, H. G., 116, 233. 
Macnevin, W. J., 155, 
Macpherson, Sir J., 40, 317. 
MacSheehy, B. , 187. 



Madden, R. R., 154, 232. 

Madgett, N., 153. 

Magra, Perkins, 78. 

Maison, Major, 249. 

Maitland. See Lauderdale. 

Malchus, 189. 

Malcolm, Colonel, 168. 

Malet, SirC, 79,273. 

Mallet, David, 142. 

Mallet du Pan, J., 5, 53. 

Malmesbury, Lord, 13, 15, 109, 148, 

182 
Malthus, T. R., 85, 90. 
Mandeville, J. H., 22, 176. 
Manning, Thomas, 26, 129, 230. 
Manzoni, A., 256, 314. 
Marat, J. P., 272. 
Marcet, Jane, 50. 
Marcofi, 175. 

Marescalchi, Ferdinand, 103. 
Marescotti, Marquis, 103. 
Marie Antoinette, Queen, 52, 54, 124, 

169. 
Marlborough. See Blandford. 
Marme, 146. 
Marron, P. H., 288. 
Mars, Anne F. H., 129. 
Martin, 146. 

Henri, 125, 177. 

Martin-Leake, 89. 

Maskelyne, N., 85, 225. 

Masquerier, L., 237. 

Masse, 270. 

Massin, Lieutenant, 204. 

Mathew, General M., 279, 317. 

Matthews, James, 247. 

Maude, Rev. J., 84, 197, 233. 

Mauude, Rev. J., 228. 

Maxwell, Major, 296. 

Maynard, Lady, 26, 58, 236, 318. 

Meek, Samuel, 111. 

Mehee de la Touche, J. C, 76, 246. 

Mehul, E. H., 130. 

Melfort, Comte, 142, 236, 278. 

Mellish, 199. 

Melville, 15, 40. 

Melzi, F., 160. 

Mendelssohn, M., 158. 

Mercier, S., 160. 

Merget, 101. 

Merimee, J. F. L., 114. 

Merry, Anthony, 10, 21, 25, 31, 72, 

95, 106, 113, 124, 128, 161. 
Mesmer, F. A., 159. 
Metternich, Prince, 189. 
Mexborough, Lady, 318. 
Meyer, Canon F. L. J., 141. 
Meziei'es, 99. 



334 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 



Miles, Lieutenant, 199. 

Miller, 246. 

Millingen,J., 141, 276. 

Milman, F., 216. 

Milne, James, 190. 

Milton, John, 105, 310. 

Miltown, Lord, 278. 

Minto, Lord, 12, 19, 57, 78, 317. 

Miot de Melito, A. F., 177. 

Mirabeau, Count, 5, 57, 273. 

Miranda, General F. , 86. 

Moffat, 244. 

Mogg, 215. 

MoW. See Clarke. 

Moir, Dr., 246, 265. 

Moira, Lord, 56, 152, 243. 

Mol6, L. M., 129. 

Molesworth, Colonel, 61, 229, 318. 

Molitemo, Prince, 161. 

Mollien, N. F., 98. 

Moltke, Adam, 157. 

Monck, Lord, 58, 162, 318. 

Money, General John, 6, 69. 

Monod, Jean, 288. 

Monro, George, 69. 

Monroe, James, 155, 227. 

Montagu, Lord F., 134, 317. 

Matthew, 46. 

Montalembert, 119, 123, 
Montefiore, 98. 
Montesquiou, F., 290. 
Montesson, Mme. de, 131. 
Montlosier, F. D., 5, 124, 181. 
Moore, F. and J. C, 18, 57, 117. 

Thomas, 54, 58, 104, 117, 228, 

274. 

T.,257. 

Mrs., 241. 

More, Hannah, 110. 
Moreau, General J. V., 103, 131. 
Morellet, Andre, 128. 
Moreton, Augustus, 61. 
Morgan, Sir C, 40, 317. 

General, G., 69, 184. 

Sydney, Lady, 109, 142. 

Morley. See Boringdon. 

Mornington. See Wellesley. 

Morpeth. See Carlisle. 

Morrice, David, 110. 

Morris, H. M., 151, 152, 241, 283, 285. 

Morshead, Sir J., 64, 199. 235, 317. 

Mosbourg, Count, 322. 

Moseley, Dr. B., 81, 

Mounier, J. J., 5. 

Mount, Miss, 233. 

Mount Cashell, Lord, 51, 57, 184, 318. 

Mount Edgecumbe, Lord, 57, 318. 

Mulvey, Dr. F., 81, 208. 



Mulvey, William, 257. 
Murat, Joachim, 58, 295, 322. 
Murray, Grenville, 58. 

Lord J., 235, 245. 

Captain R. W. F. Lathrop, 104. 

Nagot, Abbe, 70. 

Nanney, Captain, 201. 

Napoleon iii., 116. 

Narbonne, Count, 3. 

Nattes, J. C. , 92. 

Necker, Jacques, 44. 

Needham, T., 88. 

Neil, Colonel, 78. 

Neilson, Captain, 200. 

Nesbit. See Elgin. 

Nesselrode, Count, 256. 

Newcastle, Duke and Duchess, 49, 

54, 224. 
Newnham. See Molitemo. 
Ney, Marshal, 272. 
Nicholl, John, 40, 232, 317. 
Nichols, John, 99. 
Niebuhr, B. G., 157. 
Niemcewics, J. U., 91. 
Nightingale, F. See Smith, W. 

Sir M., 18. 

Nodier, Charles, 88, 116. 
North, Lord, 56. 
Nortbcote, James, 150. 
Northumberland. See Lovaine and 

Smithson. 
Northwick, Lord, 60, 318. 
Nowel, Dr., 80. 
Nugent, Count Laval, 275. 

Oakeley, Sir C, 78. 
Oakes, Sir H, , 69. 
Oberkampf, G. P., 260. 
O'Brien, Captain D. H., 245. 
O'Connell, Count, 49, 122, 235. 
O'Connor, Arthur, 33, 152, 186, 188, 
231, 247. 

General, 258. 

Oelsner, Conrad E., 69, 97. 
Oersted, H. C, 157, 256. 
O'Farrill, Gonzalo, 257. 
Oglander, SirW., 51, 65. 
O'Hara, Captain Charles, 70. 
Okey, C. H., 80. 
Olavide, P., 6. 
Oliveira, D. and E., 256. 
Oliver, Admiral R. D., 73. 

Richard, 47, 231. 

O'Mealy, 187. 
Ommaney, Sir J., 73, 125. 
O'Moran, Joseph, 258. 
Opie, J. and Amelia, 90, 260. 



INDEX OF NAMES 



835 



Orange, Prince, 155. 
O'Reilly, Julius T., 308. 

R. M.,127. 

Orleans. See Louis Philippe. 

Orsay, Gomte d', 193. 

O'Ryan, Dr. M., 81. 

Osborn, 87. 

Ossulston, Lord, 51, 318. 

O'Sullivan, John, 191. 

Oswald, John, 6, 44. 

Otto, L. G., 15, 16, 100. 

Ouvrard, J., 17, 131. 

Owen, Captain C. Cunliffe, 213, 261. 

Robert, 117. 

Owens, Captain S., 70. 
Oxford, Lord, 58, 162, 184, 277, 283, 
318. 

Paget, Sir Arthur, 78. 

Sir E., 40, 62, 168, 235, 245, 

317. 

Paine, Thomas, 6, 14, 36, 44, 66, 89, 
90, 99, 100, 102, 108, 112, 114, 139, 
156, 160, 174. 

Paisiello, G., 130. 

Pakington, Sir H., 117. 

Palmer, Colonel, 279. 

Palmerston, Lord, 40, 59, 270. 

Pamela. See Fitzgerald. 

Parker, 231. 

Parnell, Henry, 40, 317. 

Parry, James and John, 109, 229, 
259. 

Parsons, "William, 113. 

See Galignani and Maynard. 

Paterson, John, 84. 

Paterson Bonaparte, 78, 193. 

Paul, Sir John Dean, 110. 

Payne, James, 98, 233, 260. 

Peel, SirR., 54. 

Pelham, Charles, 317, 318. 

Pelly, Raymond, 65. 

Peltier, J. G.,50. 

Pembroke, Lord, 58, 318. 

Peploe, Mrs., 118. 

Percy, Major, 284. 

Perregaux, A. C, 98, 107, 142, 196. 

Perry, James, 279. 

Perth. See Melfort. 

Pestalozzi, J. H., 156. 

Petersham, Lord, 318. 

Petty. See Lansdowne. 

Philips, John, 80, 179. ■ 

Phillips, Sir J., 135. 

Thomas, 91. 

Colonel, 233. 

Phippson, Martin, 174. 
Pichegru, General Charles, 74. 



Pierrepont, E. and H. , 6, 22. 

Pigott, Edward, 87. 

Pinkerton, John, 11, 166, 225. 

Piozzi, Mme., 113. 

Pitcairn, 240. 

Pitt, William, 15, 21, 31, 34, 35, 61, 

63, 145, 147, 171, 323. 
Pius vii. , Pope, 255. 295. 
Plantade, C. H., 130. 
Playfair, William, 108, 172. 
Plumptre, Anne, 110, 166, 236. 
Pollen, Colonel, G. A., 41, 317. 
Pomfret, Lord, 318. 
Pons de I'Herault, A., 296, 300, 302. 
Ponsonby, Lord, 277. 
Poole, Thomas, 94, 99, 140. 
Poppleton, 144, 214. 
Porchester Dupr6, 14. 
Portland, Duke, 118, 277. 

See Greville, 

Portsmouth, Lord, 45. 

Potocki, Count, 156. 

Potter, Christopher, 13, 145, 235. 

Pougens, C. J., 241. 

Powell, Rev., 262. 

Power, John, 97- 

Powerscourt, Lord, 63. 

Praed, W. Mackworth, 77. 

Prescott, Sir G., 64. 

Priestley, J. and T., 85, 118, 156. 

Pringle, Mark, 317. 

Proly, B., 6. 

Provence. See Louis xvrii. 

Puppo, 130. 

Puschkine. See Bruce. 

QuENTiN, Colonel, 279. 

270. 

Queensberry, Duke, 45. 

Raglan, Lord, 278. 
Raikes, Thomas, 276. 
Raimbach, A., 92. 
Ramsay, W. Maule, 47. 

Major W. N., 70,275. 

Ranelagh, Lord, 277. 

Ratzbael, Baron, 4. 

Raucourt, 129, 224, 234. 

Ravensworth. See Liddell. 

Raynal, Abb6 Jean, 40. 

Real, P. F., 74. 

Recamier, Mme., 59, 131, 166, 169, 

224. 
Regent, Prince. See George rv. 
Regnier, Claude, 86, 234. 
Reichardt, J. F., 138, 141, 159, 163, 

165. 
Remusat, Mme. de, 176, 206. 



336 



NAPOLEON'S BKITISH VISITOKS 



Eendlesham. See Thellusson. 
Kennell, James, 86. 
Reynolds, Sir J., 141, 150, 239. 
Rich, C. J., 274. 
Richard, 293. 
Richelieu, Due, 7, 29. 
Richmond, Duke, 96, 277. 
Richter, J. P. , 157. 
Rickman, Thomas, 113, 139. 
Rigel, 252. 

Ripon. See Robinson, F. J. 
Ritson, Joseph, 89. 
Rivarol, Mme., 149. 
Robert, N. R., 173. 

148. 

Robertson, Bishop, 286. 
Robespierre, M., 178, 310. 
Robinson, F. J., 60, 273. 

H. Crabb, 276, 290. 

263. 

Robson, R. B., 197, 227, 317. 

Roche, 80, 83, 149. 

Rodde, Mile., 159. 

Rodney, Admiral, 13. 

Rogers, Samuel, 24, 48, 58, 96, 112, 

140. 
Roget de I'lsle, C. J., 128, 179. 
Rokeby, Lord. See Montagu. 
Roland, Mme., 114, 140. 
Romilly, Sir S., 51, 80, 303. 
Romney, George, 239. 
Roscoe, William, 85. 
Rose, W. Stewart, 276. 
Rotondo, J. B., 6. 
Routhier, 269. 
Rowley, SirW., 51, 70, 81. 
Rumbold, Sir G., 248. 
Rumford, Count, 87, 155. 
Rushbrook, Robert, 83. 
Russell, Catherine, 238. 
Lord J., 42, 51, 58, 85, 298, 

300, 317, 319. 

Hon. Rollo, 319. 

Thomas, 153. 

William, 193. 

Rutland, Duke, 277, 288. 
Rutledge, James, 44. 
Ryder, Dudley, 58, 134, 278, 318. 
Rylands, Mrs., 99. 

St. Albans. See Beauclerk. 

St. Amand, Mme. , 202. 

St. George, Miss, 168. 

St. John, Lord, 28, 41, 45, 317, 318. 

St. Martin, L. C, 158. 

Salm, Prince, 157. 

Salomons, Judah, 98. 

Saltmarsh, Lady A., 63, 168. 



Salvo, Marquis, 41. 
Samuda, Joseph, 257. 
Sanchamau, 279. 
Sand, George, 53, 131, 265. 
Sandon, Mrs., 144. 

See Ryder. 

Sandwich. See Hinchingbrook. 
Sanford, John, 84. 
Santerre, Claude, 30, 103. 
Sassen, Mme., 67. 
Savary, General J. J., 189. 
Say and Sele, Lord, 61, SIS. 
Sayer, Augustine, 175. 
Sayers, Julia, 241. 
Schlabrendorf, Count, 157. 
Schlegel, F., 158. 
Schopenhauer, H. F., 159. 
Schweizer, 155. 
Scott, General, 118, 234. 

Hon. John, 41, 317, 318. 

John, 280, 276, 288, 290. 

Sir W., 212. 

Dr. William, 222. 

223. 

Scott and Schabracq, 106. 

Seaford. See Ellis. 

Sebastiani, Marshal, 222. 

Sebright, Sir J., 277. 

Sefton, Lord, 318. 

Selwyn, George, 55. 

Semple, Lisle, 247. 

Senancour, E. P., 129. 

Seymour, Henry, 47, 229. 

Shaftesbury, Lord. 43, 58, 225, 233, 

318 
Shakspere, 310. 

Sharpe, S. and C, 96, 129, 140, 234. 
Shee, Sir M., 92. 
Sheehy, Lieutenant, 264. 
Sheffield, Lord, 72. 
Shelley, Sir T., 303. 
Shepherd, Rev. W., 85, 156, 277, 287, 

292 
Sheridan, R. B., 37, 86. 
Sherlock, William, 92. 
Shipley, SirC, 70, 227. 
— SirG., 64. 
Shirley, 243. 
Shrewsbury, Lord, 318. 
Shuldham, M. 201. 
Sicard, Abbe, 90, 99, 284. 
Siddons, Sarah, 274, 281. 
Sidmouth, Lord. See Addington. 
Sidney, Algernon, 32. 
Sieyes, Emm. Joseph, 78. 
Silburn, Mrs., 239. 
Simon, General, 245. 
Simpson, A. and J., 259. 



INDEX OF NAMES 



337 



Simpson, Dr., 200. 
Sinclair, General G., 86, 252. 
Singleton, Captain, 18. 
Sloper, Granby, 231. 
Smith, Sir Culling, 61. 

.James, 148, 190, 217. 

J. Spencer, 41, 76, 317. 

Sir J. Sidney, 16, 41, 68, 73, 75, 

94, 251, 275. 

William, 42, 45, 317. 

Captain, 296. 

235. 

Smithson, James, 251, 

Smyth, J. Carmichael, 81, 225, 275. 

SirE., 47, 141, 145. 

Colonel, 210, 

Smythe, Walter, 13. 
Somers. See Cocks. 
Somerset, Duke, 47, 54, 169, 317. 

See Raglan. 

Sorel, Albert, 24, 174. 
Soules, F., 23. 
Soult, Marshal. 270. 
Southey, H., 89, 118. 
Spallannchi, General, 293. 
Spencer, Lord R., 45, 62, 137, 317. 

See Althorp, 

Spurzheim, J. G., 256. 

Stack, General B., 70, 217. 

Stael, Mme. de, 90, 117, 156, 276, 

306. 
Stafford, Lady, 141. 
Stahremberg, Count, 240. 
Stanhope, Lady Hester, 5, 63, 221. 

J. Spencer, 226. 

Lord, 63, 105. 

P. Dormer, 307- 

Stanley, Bishop E., 83, 223. 

See Derby. 

Stapleton, Bishop, 82. 
Starling, Sir G., 296. 
Stawell, Lord, 60, 318. 
Staybelt, ISO. 
Steele, Thomas, 78. 
Stendhal. See Beyle. 
Stepney, Sir J. , 277. 
Stevens, Catherine, 278. 
Stewarton, 110. 
Stirling, Sir W., 51, 229. 

William, 257. 

Stodart, L., 235. 

Stone, J. H. and W., 141, 231. 

Thomas, 120. 

Storace, Anna S., 14. 
Storer, Anthony, 118. 
Story, William, 95, 238, 263. 
Stothard, Thorn g , 276. 
Strangford, Lord, 58, 318. 



Strathallan, Lord, 172, 
Street, T. G., 288. 
Strogonoff, Count, 6. 
Stuart, Daniel, 259, 287. 

Margaret, 241. 

de Rothesay, Lord, 77, 283, 287. 

Stubbs, 149. 

Sturt, Charles, 11, 43, 178, 202, 205, 

317. 
Style, Sir C, 63, 168. 
Sullivan, 153. 

Sunderland. See Blandford. 
Sussex, Duke, 170, 274, 303. 
Sutherland, Duke, 277. 
Sutton, Captain, 178. 
Swan, Colonel James, 155. 
Swedenborg, E., 158. 
Swinburne, H. , 13, 16. 
Sykes, Henry, 144. 

Talbot, SirC, 64. 

James, 16, 22, 176. 

John, 62. 

Sir John, 73. 

Thomas, 121, 261. 

TaUeyrand, Prince, 3, 4, 7, 20, 23, 
29, 32, 46, 55, 110, 119, 120, 153, 
170, 191, 206, 230, 242, 244, 247, 
251 290 

Tallie'n, J.' L., 17, 33, 58, 79, 103, 131. 

Talma, F. J., 129, 254. 

Tancred, SirT., 51, 64. 

Tandy, J. Napper, 151. 

Tankerville. See Ossulston. 

Tappen, George, 110. 

Tarver, J. C, 180. 

Tattersall, Edward, 99. 

Taylor, Mrs., 241. 

William, 89, 118. 

Temple, 209. 

SirG., 64, 228. 

Admiral John, 73. 

Thanet. See Tufton. 

Thayer. See Bertrand. 

Thellusson, 43, 317. 

Thelwall, John, 273. 

Theroigne de Mericourt, 96. 

Thibaudeau, A. C, 163. 

Thiebault, General P. C, 222. 

Thiers, A., 31. 

Thistlewood, A.,273. 

Thompson, 153. 

Thomas, 44, 205, 279. 317. 

Mrs., 236. 

Thornton, 97. 

Colonel T., 92, 109, 222. 

Thrale, See Piozzi. 

Throckmorton, William, 214. 



338 



NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 



Tichborne, Sir H., 64, 117, 233. 

Tierney, George, 44, 303, 317. 

Tilt, 119. 

ToUemache, Admiral, 72, 318. 

Tolstoi, Count, 256. 

Tone, T. Wolf, 153. 

Tooke. See Home Tooke. 

Torrington, Lord, 52. 

Tourton, SirT., 51. 

Tower, Captain, 300, 301. 

Towneley, Charles, 13, 88. 

Townshend, General, 69. 

Travers, Dr. Benjamin, 81. 

Trebout, 270. 

Trench, R., 119, 161, 229. 

Trenck, Baron, 6. 

Trevor, John H., 62, 318. 

Trimleston, Lord, 277. 

Trotter, J. B., 28,30,221. 

Troubetski, Prince, 1.56. 

Troy, Archbishop J. T., 83. 

Truguet, Admiral L. J. F., 186. 

Truro, Lord, 79. 

Tuckey, J. H., 217, 241, 265. 

Tufton, H. and C, 205, 317, 318. 

Tuite, Father, 83. 

Tulloch, Captain F., 70, 213. 

Turnbull, 259. 

Trimer, Sir G., 317. 

J. W. M., 56. 

Samuel, 258. 

William, 92. 

Tussaud, Mme., 170. 
Tuthill, SirG.,81, 228. 
Tweeddale, Lord, 54, 259, 317. 
Twiss, Robert, 258, 274. 
Tyrwhitt, Sir Thomas, 45, 317. 
Tytler, P. Fraser, 274. 

Underwood, T. R., 93. 
Ussher, SirT., 298. 
Uxbridge. See Paget. 

Van de Weybb, 319, 324. 
Vaughan, Sir C, 77. 
Vernon, Caroline, 64. 
Vesey, Colonel John, 318. 
Vestris, Mme. G. A. B., 129. 
Vigee-Lehrun, Mme., 14, 131,162, 167. 
Villeneuve, Admiral P. C. , 188, 262. 
Villiers, J. C, 45, 134, 317, 318. 
Visconti, Mme., 171. 
Volney, C. F., 128. 
Voss, Julius, 159. 

Waddington, William, 144, 154. 
Wake, Rev. R. W., 290. 
Wales, Prince. See George iv. 



Walhope, C, 45, 260, 317. 
Wall, Governor Joseph, 16. 

Patrick, 125. 

Wallace, Sir T., 45, 199, 317. 
Waller, John, 232, 317. 
Walpole, Horace, 92, 117. 

Captain, 199. 

See Atkyns. 

Walsh, Dr. William, 83, 244. 

de Serrant, 258. 

Wansey, Henry, 271, 290. 
Ward, WilUam, 120. 
Warden, William, 311. 
Warren, 238. 

Dawson, 21. 

Washington, George, 32. 
Watson, Robert, 151. 
Watt, James, 86, 94. 

Dr., 265. 

Watts, Isaac, 226. 

Webb, Sir J. and T., 58, 64, 224, 

233 
Webster, SirG., 60. 
Wedgwood, Thomas, 94, 144. 
Wellesley, Lord, 12, 123, 272, 278, 

303. 

See Cowley. 

Wellington, Duke, 14, 39, 58, 71, 80, 

265, 267, 272, 274, 278, 281, 283- 

286, 297, 306, 307, 319, 322, 324. 
Wesley, John, 89. 
West, Sir B., 80, 90, 92. 

Sir J., 73. 

Westmorland. See Burghersh. 
Weston, Rev. S., 30, 37, 84, 126, 

277, 282, 288, 292. 
Whaley, 'Jerusalem' and W., 63, 

199. 

Lady M., 63. 

Whitbread, S., 273, 303. 
White, 148. 

Rev., 261. 

Whitmore, W. W., 319. 

Whitshed, Sir J., 73. 

Whitworth, Lord, 10, 22, 34, 57, 73, 

84, 95, 100, 130, 152, 162, 175, 298, 

318 
Wickham, William, 76, 231. 

Dr., 80, 225. 

Widmer, 260. 
Wieland, Christopher, 157. 
Wielopolski, Count, 256. 
Wilberforce, William, 275. 
Wilbraham, 198. 
Wilde. See Truro. 
Wilkie, Sir D., 93, 276. 
Willcox, C, 257. 
William iv., 48. 



INDEX OF NAMES 



339 



Williams, 200. 
Arabella, 142. 

— David, 114. 
Dr., 277, 288. 

Helen M., 6, 33, 59, 85. 140, 

160, 162, 308. 

W. T., 110, 166, 225. 

Wilmot, Sir R., 64. 
Wilson, 198. 

Edmund, 233. 

Hugh, 155. 

John, 248. 

Winchilsea, Lord, 58, 318. 
Windham, William, 31, 42, 49. 
Wirion, General, 200-218. 
Wittinghoff, General, 6. 
Wollaston, W. H., 228. 
Wollstonecraft, Mary and J., 6, 118. 
Wolowski, S., 256. 
Wolseley, SirC, 64,235. 
Wombwell, John, 65. 
Woodford, Ralph, 65, 71. 
Woodville, Dr. W., 80. 
Woodyatt, G., 235. 



Wordsworth, William, 112. 
Worsley, Israel, 110, 209. 
Wortley, Louisa. 40. 
Wraxall, Sir N.,' 53. 
Wright, John, 92. 

Captain, J. W., 73, 210. 

William, 216. 

Wurtemberg, King and Queen, 191, 

207. 
Wyndham, C, 45, 62,317. 
Wynford, Lord, 36, 274, 316. 

Yarboboxjqh. See Pelham. 
Yarmouth, Lord, 26, 45, 205, 207. 

218-221, 228, 317. 
York, Cardinal, 52, 56, 59, 101, 254. 

Duke and Duchess, 37, 208. 

Yorke, H. Redhead, 108, 139, 140, 

160, 166. 
Young, Arthiir, 86. 

Thomas, 81, 88. 

Sir William, 51. 

Zamoiski, Count, 156. 



OTHER VISITORS AND CAPTIVES.^ 

1801-1813 

Abernetht, James. Adams, John. Addison, Dr., escaped. 
Ainsley. Ainsworth, Jas. Wroth. Aitken, David, surgeon, Glas- 
gow. Aitken, Robert. Aitken, Thomas, banker. Allen, Major 
Alex. Allen, Major John. Allen, Luke. Allsop, Barleton. Ander- 
son, Lieut. Thomas. Andrews, Alex. Andrews, Henry., Annesley, 
Gilbert. Anstey, Capt. Anstruther, Col. David. Arbuthnot, 
Major Thos. Arcedeckne, Jas. Archdall, Edward. Argle, Oapt. 
Geo. Arthur, Daniel, secretary to Portuguese Embassy. Ashford, 
Wm. Ashton, Jno. Ashworth, escaped. Atkinson, Jno. Atkin- 
son, Wm. Aubrey, Major. Austin, Jno. Austin, Thos. 

Balfour, Jno. Balgrove. Ballantyne, Jas. Banks, Jos. Barber, 
Capt. Barretti, Jas. Barry, Edwd. Bateman, Wm. Battley, 
Geo. Bazalgette, Louis. Beamish, Chas. Beaumont, Chas. Beck- 
with, Samuel. Benson, Capt. Richd., escaped. Bentham, Wm. 
Bermingham, Lieut. Bernard, Geo. Berry, Jno. Best, Louis. 
Betts, Charles. Betts, Geo. Bevington, Geo. Bingham. Birch, 
Capt. Jno. Birch, Major Thos. Blackmore, Eobt. Blair, Capt. 
Hunter. Blake, Arthur. Blake, Benj. Blake, Col. Wm. Blanck- 
ney. Bode, Jno., escaped. Bold, Peter. Bold, Lieut. Thos. Bon- 
ham, Jno., barrister. Boothby, Capt, (afterwards Rev.) Charles. Bord, 
Jno. Botwright, Wm. Bourne, Samuel. Bouverie, Capt. Bowles, 
Lieut. Humphrey. Bradby, Jas., barrister. Bradford, Lieut.-Col, 
Brandrum, Thos. Brenton, Sir J. Brettell, Jno. Brewer, Capt,, 
escaped. Brewer, Edward. Bridge, Wm. Briggins, Dr. Brine, 
escaped. Brodie, Capt. Brown, Capt., escaped. Brown, Lieut. 
Bruce, Alex. Buchanan, Jas. Bunbury, Thos. Burke, Major Eras. 
Burns, Major. Burrows, Dr. Geo. M. Burton, Jas. Byrne, Jas. 

Campbell, R. Campbell of Jamaica. Carleton, Jno. Carey, 
Capt. Carey, Peter, Carron, Casenove, Cavendish, Geo, and 

1 Subject to orthographic errors in French records, 
340 



OTHER VISITORS AND CAPTIVES 341 

Louis. Ohanning, Jno. and Thos. Chetham, Col. Christie, Fras. 
Clarke, Dr. Jas. Clifton, Capt. Colvert, Gen. Colville, Geo. 
Combe, Capt. Congreve, Capt. Conolly. Cooper, Eev. Sir Wm. 
Cope, Lieut.-Col. Corbett, Jas. Cotterell. Courtenay, "Wm. 
Courvoisier, Peter. Cox, Col. Craufurd, Lieut. Jas. Hy. Crau- 
furd, Eev. Jno. Creswick, Fred. Croke, Jno. Cussans, Thos. Cusy. 
Cuthbert, Jno. Ramsay. Cutler. 

Dacre. Dale, Jos., escaped. Dalrymple, Capt. Dalyell, Wm. 
Daniell, Wm. Darby, escaped. Dare. David, Dr. Davies. Deane, 
Capt. De Boyne, Gen. Devonshire, Col. Fras. D'lvernois, Col. 
Dobson, Geo. Douglas, Mrs. Dowse, Major. Duff, Col. Dukin- 
field, Sir N. Dupr6, Wm. Dyson, Geo. 

Elrington. Elwin. Este. Eustace, Major. Evans. 

Fagin. Falkenham. Fane, Capt., released. Fiott. Fitzgerald, 
Richd. Fletcher, Edward. Floyd, Gen. Sir Jno. Forsyth. Foster, 
Peter Le Neve, father of the scientist. Fox, Dr., escaped. Eraser, 
escaped. Fulk. 

Garland, Jno. Watt. Garland, Peter. Garnier. Gellibrand, 
Wm. George, Lieut. Gerrard, Alex., liberated. Gerrard, Capt. 
Jno. Giffard, Jno. Goodman. Gordon, Col. Green, Jos. Grey, 
Sir Thomas. Grosvenor, Mary. 

Halifax. Hankey, Jno. Peter. Hare. Harvey, Col. Hawey, 
Col. Heathcote. Henderson. Hendley, Capt. Hewitson, Dr. 
Hibberd. Hill, Samuel. Hill, Thos. Hodgson, Thos. Carlisle. 
HoUond, Thos. Honywood, Courtenay, Hooke, Chas. Howard, 
Capt. Humphreys, Wm. Hunter, Orby, Hutchins. 

Jackson, Edward. Jackson, John. Jackson, Mills, escaped. 
Jackson, Richmond. Jackson, Wm., liberated. Jenner, Wm. John- 
ston, Major. Jones, Lieut. 

Kennedy. Kensington, Charles. Kensington, J. B. King, Geo. 
Kingston, Major Strickland. Kinnersley. 

Later. Laurens, Dr. Geo, Lee, Wm. Leigh, Philip, escaped. 
Le Mesurier, Fras. Le Soulf, Hauteville, Leveson-Gower, Capt. 
Wm. Light. Little, escaped. Livie, Alex. Lloyd, Dr. Wm. Lori- 
mer. Lynch, Gen. 

Macdonnell, Jas. Macdounell, Jos. Macfarlane. Mackay, Capt. 
Mackenzie, Major, escaped. Macnamara, Col. Macnamara, Geo. 
MacTaggart, Sir Jno. Madan. Mandeville, Robt. Massingberd, 
0. Burrell. Masterson. Maude, Jno. Baptist. May, Dr. Mercer, 
Jos., died at Bitche. Merivale, Robert. Montgomerie, Thos. and 
Geo., liberated. Moore, Anthony. Moore, Col. Moore, Jno. 
liberated. Mountney. Muriel. Murray, Col. 



342 NAPOLEON'S BRITISH VISITORS 

Nasmyth, Capt. Jas. Marshall. Newman, Henry. Newland, 
Gideon. Nicholson, Col., escaped. 

O'Byrne. Oliphant, Edward. Olive. O'Reardon. Otto. Ouvrard. 

Palmer, Gen. Thos. Palmer, Mrs. Parsons. Pater, Capt. 
Paterson, Dr. Jas. Philipps, Jno. Burton and Nathaniel. Pigott, 
Gillery. Pigott, Jno., Hy., and Edwd. Pilling, Jno. Plunket, 
Oliver and Peter. Popham, Major. Potter, Ralph. Power, Capt. 
Power, Jno. Prescott, Lieut. Pridham, Lieut. 

Raikes, Capt. RenneU, Capt. Richardson, Col. Ridman, 
Roberts. RoupeU Sir (?) Wm. Ruddock, Col. Rumsey, Major. 
Russell, Wm. Thos. 

St. Leger, Harewood (son of Viscount Doneraile ?). Scott, Col. 
Scott-Moncrieff. Shuttleworth, Jos. Sibbald. Smith, Rev. Dr. 
Spalding, Col. Spencer, Col. (qy. Gen. Wm.). Stack, Jno., minera- 
logist. Stacpoole, Capt. Stanhope, Capt. Chas. and Hy., midship- 
man (sons of Lord Chesterfield) ; Henry, escaped. Strachey, Capt., 
R.N. Sutton, Capt., escaped. Swayne, Col. Hy. 

Taylor, Edward. Tindall, Lieut.-Col. Travers. Trevelyan, 
Truelock, Wm. Tupper, naturalised. Turton, Thos., bishop of Ely. 

Walker, Capt., escaped. Walpole, Jno., Robt., Edwd. Wardrop, 
Cunningham, Glasgow, aged 17. Warburton, Willis. Warwick. 
Wayland. Wetherdown. Whitaker, Capt., escaped. White, Rev. 
Wm., vicar of Lancaster, escaped. Willis, Richd. and Thos. of 
Scarborough, died at Bitche. Windham, Frances. Wingfield, Col. 
Wolfe, Rev. Robt. Woodford, Jno. Alex. Worth, son of admiral. 
Wright, Jno. Masey, artist Wyndham, Col. 

1814-1815. 

Ainslie, Miss. Bennett, Wm., bishop of Cloyne. Black, Capt. 
Clive. Colnaghi, jun., printseller. Du Cane. Heneage. James, Sir 
Walter. Leman. Lutwyche. Planta, Edwd. Robertson. Rotch, 
Benj. Seymour, Hy. Swinburne. Twining, Richd. Vyner, Miss. 
Whalley, Thos. Sedgwick, D.D. Wyburn. 



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